Medicalization
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Medicalization: the process by which non-medical problems come to be defined and treated as if they are medical issues (e.g. "alcoholism"). The dramatic growth in the number of categories of mental illness as explained the various versions of the DSM (diagnostic and statistical manual of mental illness) is a primary example. For instance, the current (DSM-IV) version, lists impotence, premature ejaculation, jet lag, and caffeine intoxication as mental illnesses. Further, a "patina of medical importance" is given to the most commonly diagnosed personality disorder (309.9 Personality Disorder not Otherwise Specified.)
In the process of medicalization the purview of medicine extends to formerly non-medical areas of life, by identifying formerly non-medical conditions such as social deviance and aging as medical problems. This concept was named by Irvin K. Zola.
The concept can be defined in several 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.
The antithesis of medicalization is the process of paramedicalization, where alternative therapies and theories of health, wellness and disease are adopted. 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.
