Scope OF Sociology OF Health PDF

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While sociology is a broad study of human behaviour in society, sociology of health is a systematic investigation of how people deal with health and wellness issues, diseases and illnesses, and medical services for both sick and healthy people. Medical sociologists study health and disease from a ph...

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SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH INTRODUCTION

While sociology is a broad study of human behaviour in society, sociology of health is a systematic investigation of how people deal with health and wellness issues, diseases and illnesses, and medical services for both sick and healthy people. Medical sociologists study health and disease from a physical, mental, and social perspective. There are two aspects to health sociology. It is the science of physicians' social phenomena as a distinct class, as well as the science of the laws governing the relationships between the medical field and human society as a whole: treating the framework of both, how and why current conditions arose, and how far human civilization has progressed.

SCOPE OF SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH

The scope of health sociology can be divided into a few broad categories, which are: a) Health and Disease, b) Medicine, c) Private and Public Sector, and d) Society and Health are the four categories.

The study's scope is discussed from both a sociological and an anthropological standpoint under these broad categories. The micro perspective and ethnographic level are more important. For example, the socio-anthropological perspective aims to investigate patterns of diseases in the area, ethnographic studies on illness, and so on.

The study of the distribution of illness in a population is known as social epidemiology. It also looks into the factors that lead to the selective onset of illnesses in a group, population, or region, or at a specific time. What is the relationship between disease incidence and age, gender, occupation, or region? The grouping is used as the independent variable in this case, with the dependent variable being a

symptom, disease, or impairment. Social epidemiological studies look at the incidences of illness in relation to the distribution of health services. Epidemiological profiling has been used to study both acute and chronic diseases. Such research aims to introduce targeted public health interventions.

Ethnography of Health and Illness is another facet of the health and illness field. Qualitative ethnographic studies on the experience of disease, the meaning of suffering, and the coping mechanisms of patients have delved deeply into the subjective aspect of ill health. Such studies have attempted to deconstruct or supplement medical and statistical definitions of disease with perspectives from people who have lived through illness. Religious values, shared social experiences, livelihood skills, and the natural environment, as well as individual habits, all influence the lived experience of illness.

The Scope of the Sociology of Health also includes ethnography of health and illness, as well as determinants of fertility and mortality. The dynamics of fertility and mortality rates in a society determine the pattern of disease on a collective level. The theory of epidemiological transition explains the link between fertility and mortality, stating that when a country's economy grows, the death rate falls first, followed by the birth rate. As they contribute to public health policies, attempts to correlate birth and death rates with economic growth, health amenities, and women's education are repeated time and time again. Infant and maternal mortality rates are important indicators of a population's health because they combine the realms of birth and death. Fertility and mortality are studied in relation to more complex variables such as workplace participation, political instability, changes in lifestyle habits, social mobility, and technological advancements in the social sciences.

Medical practises, medicine as a profession, and the way people use healthcare differ from country to country. As a result, when we discuss medicine as a subset of sociology of health, we do so from a contextual and sociological standpoint. What kind of medical knowledge and skill is distributed, who provides these services, and so on.

In Africa, Latin America, and Asia, traditional medical systems have a long history and coexist with biomedical services, which the government also supports. Even today, non-biomedical practises predominate in these countries, with patients paying in cash or in kind for services provided at their doorstep or at their location. Biomedicine, on the other hand, has almost completely replaced hospitals, nursing homes, and clinics as the primary delivery system for medical care.

The study has always focused on the social relationship between the doctor and the patient. What kind of professional and personal ethics guide the doctor-patient relationship, whether they differ depending on social background, and how caste, class, ethnicity, race, and gender influence the relationship. These are crucial areas of inquiry in both the private and public spheres. Studies on patients' coping mechanisms in the case of prolonged diseases or illnesses, as well as the types of social support they have, show that social relationships can have a significant impact on the recovery process. It is impossible to overestimate the importance of family and kinship in the treatment of illness. Indeed, the rise of hospitals and clinics has been credited with the family's diminished role as a result of industrialization.

The sociology of health and illness deals with a wide range of issues and problems, including:

• The origins of the term "disease," • the experience of sickness or illness, • the structure and organisation of the medical profession, • the development of health policies, and • the operation of hospitals Sociologists study health and disease in all of these areas because they provide opportunities for society to function.

KEY CONCEPTS IN SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH The Concept of Illness, Sickness and Disease:

The study of health, illness, and disease in relation to society encompasses a wide range of topics, including: These include medical knowledge analysis, perceptions and experiences of health and illness, social and cultural aspects of the body, and patienthealth professional interactions. The interaction of sociology and medicine as disciplines and practises has always had a significant impact on the field of health and illness sociology. Medical sociology is a branch of sociology that studies health, illness, and disease, as well as the nature, operation, and applications of various medical systems to regulate human social activity. Sociology has always attempted to keep up with public health issues. Emile Durkheim's work, Suicide (1951), can be seen as one of the first socio-medical treatises, in which he attempted to assess the point of people's dislocation within the society that is taking a heavy toll on their lives. Max Weber, in his work The Protestant Ethics and the Spirit of Capitalism (1958), looked at the societal dislocation caused by the transition in religious groups' cultural beliefs and how it affected people's life chances, such as mortality and morbidity rates.

According to functional perspectives, society is compared to the human body, where the concept of parts working together for the good of the whole is crucial. Similarly to how society is made up of various social structures, the human body is made up of various parts that work together to ensure the proper functioning of the whole. When one part of the body malfunctions, the entire organism suffers. In the same way, when one social structure fails, the entire system suffers from chaos and confusion, disrupting the society's normal pattern. The concept of "sick role" was developed by Talcott Parsons in the field of medical sociology. Illness, according to Parsons, is a social phenomenon rather than a physical ailment. 'The state of an individual's optimum capacity for the effective performance of the roles and tasks for which she or he has been socialised,' he defined health. (1951, Parsons) As a result, from a functionalist perspective, health is one of the pre-requisites for society's smooth

functioning. If a person becomes ill, he will be unable to achieve the goals set forth by society. As a result, illness is a "unmotivated deviance."

Under Sociology of Health, the Marxist perspective on health and illness denotes that the economy is the foundation of society, on which the superstructure is built. According to Marx, the superstructure consists of the political, legal, educational, religious, and health systems, among other things. Health is viewed on two levels in the capitalist economic system: first, a worker's health is affected either directly through industrial diseases and injuries, stress-related ill health as a result of work pressure, or indirectly through the process of commodity production. Various industrial activities pollute the environment, resulting in long-term health consequences for people in the capitalist system, such as the consumption of processed foods, chemical additives, car accidents, an increase in obesity, and so on.

Second, an individual's income and wealth determine his or her standard of living, access to health care, educational qualifications, and other factors. As a result, within the capitalistic social structure, a person who lacks a higher income will also be deprived of health care facilities. As a result, all of these factors contribute to significant changes in society's health patterns. According to the Symbolic Interactionist theory, people's social identities are manipulated by other people's reactions and attitudes. As a result, if we engage in any abnormal or 'deviant' behaviour, we can expect society to assign a label to us. This has the potential to cause significant changes in people's self-identity. On this occasion, Erving Goffman's (1968) work on "social stigma" is crucial, as a person is stigmatised in society due to his inability to perform a normal role in society. For example, if a person has AIDS, he or she is stigmatised in society and, in most cases, excluded from society.

As a result, one of the most important sub-sections of healthcare disciplines such as public health, healthcare management, clinical medicine, and nursing is the sociological approach to medicine. It entails conducting a sociological examination of medical practise. The field of health sociology frequently collaborates with sociology

of science, knowledge, and technology studies, as well as social epistemology. Medical sociologists are fascinated by patients' experiences and frequently work at the intersections of public health, social work, demography, and gerontology.

By illness, we mean a subjective phenomenon involving an individual's psychological awareness of having a disease, symptoms, or pain, and typically altering his or her social behaviour as a result, or in which Susser attempted to define the term "illness" in 1973 by referring to an individual's inner sense of feeling unwell. Illness, he claims, does not refer to any specific pathology, but rather to a person's subjective perception of it, such as discomfort, exhaustion, or a general feeling of malaise. We can even think of sickness as a concept that combines the biomedical model (disease) with the patient's socio-cultural context (illness).

When it comes to the definition of disease, we can assume that it is an abnormal, pathological state that affects either individual parts or the entire individual. Disease is frequently interpreted as a medical condition with explicit indicators and signs, according to the Dorland Medical Dictionary. Disease is a pathological process that causes a person to depart from his or her normal state of being. A disease, as opposed to an illness (psychological awareness of a disease) or a sickness (a social state), is defined in Sociology of Health as "an adverse physical state consisting of a physiological dysfunction within an individual."

THE CONCEPT OF MEDICALIZATION

The expansion of its conceptual model to the analysis of social ills and attendant policy, or a critique of the expanding role of social medicine in the social control of deviant behaviour, as a critique of medicine's authoritarian and imperialist nature, gave rise to the concept of medicalization in the 1950s and 1960s.

People's attitudes toward medicalization have changed over time. "Medicalization" is defined as "identifying a problem in medical terms, explaining a problem using

medical terminology, understanding an issue using a medical framework, or treating it with a medical technique." In this passage, it also emphasises the definitional aspect of medicalization.

Medicalization brings problems under the purview of medicine, as well as, if available, their solutions. Despite this, social control did not play a significant role in this important concept. There has been a shift in the 'engines of medicalization' over the last several decades, with a greater emphasis on various contributors to medicalization, such as industry and patients. This broader perspective allowed for a more in-depth examination of medicalization. It enables researchers to examine the positive effects of medicalization, for instance. On the other hand, some argue that this has led to medicalization becoming a catch-all term that has lost its meaning. Medicalization, it is claimed, has evolved over time from a critical perspective on power dynamics in medicine to a nearly all-encompassing term that encompasses all modern medicine transformations. Furthermore, it has been suggested that by focusing solely on the issue of medicalization's definition, the practical nature of medicine has been overlooked.

Pharmaceuticalization and bio-medicalization are two scientific disciplines that have developed alongside medicalization. "The process by which doctors, patients, or both treat, or consider to be in need of treatment/intervention, social, behavioural, or physiological discomforts using pharmaceuticals," according to the definition. Biomedicalization is a term that refers to increased medicalization as a result of technological advancements. 18 Both are aware of the business interests of a company, technological advancements, consumerism, media impact, and danger. Both methods identify mechanisms of medicalization that are comparable. As a result, it's unclear whether

one

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medicalization

(pharmaceuticalization), or a more intense form of medicalization (bio medicalization)

THE CULTURAL MEANING OF ILLNESS

Many medical sociologists believe that illnesses have a biological as well as an experiential component. Which illnesses are stigmatised and which are not, which are considered disabilities and which are not, and which are deemed contestable (meaning some medical professionals may doubt the existence of this ailment) versus definitive are all determined by our culture, not our biology (illnesses that are unquestionably recognised in the medical profession).

Sociologist Erving Goffman (1963), for example, showed how social stigmas prevent people from fully integrating into society. The stigma associated with a disease has a significant impact on the patient and the care that he or she receives. Many people believe that certain illnesses, such as mental illnesses, AIDS, eneriosis, and skin problems, are stigmatised in our culture and even in medical institutions. These diseases may be isolated from other areas of health care or restricted to a less desirable location due to a lack of resources. Because of the stigma, people may be hesitant to seek treatment for their condition, making it worse than it needs to be.

Some doctors question the validity of certain illnesses, which are referred to as disputed illnesses. Depending on the medical professional's perspective, disorders like fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome may or may not be diseases. This dynamic can have an impact on how a patient seeks treatment and what kind of treatment he or she gets.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ILLNESS EXPERIENCE

The concept of illness experience as a social construction is based on the concept of reality as a social construction. To put it another way, there is no objective reality separate from our perceptions of it. The social construction of illness experience examines how some patients manage their communication about their illnesses and the

lifestyle changes they make to cope with their illnesses. The illness experience is influenced by both culture and individual personality. A long-term illness can narrow a person's world, emphasising the severity of the condition. Others may see illness as a chance for self-discovery and re-imagination. Culture has a big influence on how people deal with illness. For example, AIDS and breast cancer have specific cultural markers that have evolved over time and influence how people—and society—view them.

Many wellness organisations are now aware of how human perspectives affect the nature of health and disease. When it comes to physical activity, the Canadian Public Health Agency recommends that people set a specific level of effort to track their progress. Because heart rate and pulse measurements may be affected by medication or other issues, this rating of perceived exertion (RPE) provides a more complete picture of an individual's actual exertion level. In the same way, many medical professionals use a similar scale for determining pain management strategies. LET US SUM UP

In its brief history, the field of sociology of health has seen significant institutional and intellectual growth. Some of these changes have been beneficial, such as the field's continued use of sociological theory. By investigating how social structure and culture influence health, the prevalence of illness among individuals and groups, the availability and acceptance of treatment, and the operation of the health care delivery system, sociological research has helped to improve the definition of health and wellbeing....