Medicalization
From Biocrawler, the free encyclopedia.
Medicalization means an expansion of the medical institution and reviewing deviance and all the processes of human life from a medical perspective.
Irvin K. Zola is the father of the concept. In the medicalization process the power of medicine extends to before non-medical areas, there are ever more diagnoses.
The concept can be determined in many ways. Usually social scientists talk about medicalization considering the status of medicine: doctors control people. In a narrower sense medicalization means that human decisions (both on a personal and a common level) increasingly rest on health consciousness.
As an antithesis for medicalization there is the process of paramedicalization: emphasis on health beliefs outside medicine is increasing. Even if medicalization and paramedicalization are contradictory, they also feed each other: they both ensure, that the questions of health and illness stay in sharp focus.
External links
- [1] (http://www.uta.fi/laitokset/tsph/health/society/medicalisation.html) - Public site concerning medicalization (by Markku Myllykangas and Raimo Tuomainen, Kuopio, Finland)
