The judicial and medical institutions have the legitimacy of creating deviance
categories. In the 1900's, medicine became supreme: in practice many things
labelled to badness belong now to illness. Medicalization
means the expansion of medicine - many fields of normal human life and
deviation have become in the focus of medicine. The most typical meanings of
the concept 'medicalization' are dealing with the
status of medical profession or, on the other hand, controlling social
phenomena. The third dimension of this term is the judging of human life in
association with health, in light of the newest medical knowledge.
During the last generations public health in modern countries has developed in
a positive direction. People have learnt to avoid suffering, which is nowadays
considered purposeless and must be eliminated. However, only a fractional part
of people's daily symptoms leads to using health care: medicalization
has a fruitful substrate to extent.
The wideness of prevailing health concept is an indicator of the state in medicalization process. The widening of the concept makes
the relation between society and the health of its members clear, which
consolidates health promotion in society. A good example of a diffusion of the
wide health concept and the emphasis on the health effects is the model of
community diagnosis.
Medicine has been blamed as being imperialistic. The tendency to expand is,
however, typical for any human institution. Medicalization
is connected with six needs in our society: on micro level 1. the need for belief in authority, 2. the
need for liberation from guilt by externalizing problems, and 3. the need to direct narcism; on the
macro level 4. the need for controlling deviance, 5. the need for promoting market system, and 6. the need for supporting the contemporary social power
structure.
According to Festinger's theory of cognitive
dissonance a human being tends to search and emphasize information, which is in
harmony with one's own outlook or action. The theory led to highlighting the
idea of commitment. As Western people avoid many health hazards, they are
committed to caring for one's health. People are also integrated to the meritocratic ideology, the cause of a massive
marginalization. However, working-aged are predominantly in a situation that
feeds conformity, ie. in
ruling one's life the success strategy. The most definite type of success
strategy is healthism.
Doctor's duty is unfortunately dual: to understand, and to judge. A biomedically oriented practitioner is in danger of losing
the grip with patient's subjective experience. Alienation from the part of
human being which is scientifically unexplorable may
not serve the cause for health. As an antithesis for medicalization
there is the process of paramedicalization: emphasis
on health beliefs outside medicine is increasing. Traditional or alternative
medicine has a huge area to operate with. It reaches to every human activity -
even to the time beyond birth and death. Medicalization
has much stricter borders.
Medicalization is a threat, if health behaviour
becomes a new marginalizing factor: people polarize in medicalized
and hazard actors. Self-destructiveness should be accepted as a substantial
part of human nature. Knowing the risks does not necessarily liberate, but
means also anxiety. Ethical norms must guide health promotion, medicine, and
especially genetic improvement.
The idea of medicalization has no unreserved
approval. The theories about medicalization have been
seen too narrow, and the conceptional determination
is the weak point. In Finland arguments dealing with medicalization
are quite rare: the health care system is considered as an unselfish attender.
English medicalization sites: Tampere University, course "Health values, media
publicity and citizens":: Medicalization (Myllykangas and Tuomainen)
This is a list
of those fellows worked with me studying medicalization: Riitta
Ahonen, Jyrki Elo, Juha Kinnunen, Petteri Mehto,
Markku Myllykangas, Pekka Piironen, Olli-Pekka Ryynänen, Heikki Tikkala,
Eeva-Liisa Tuomainen, Maunu Tuomainen, Minna Tuppurainen, Eeva Töyry ja Anne Waldén. As
a result we have made many Finnish articles.
Back to Finnish, siis jos englannin kieli ei
tunnu hyvältä
raimo.tuomainen@kuh.fi Sosiologian kotisivu Sociology Home Page
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