Chapter 14: Health and Illness

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Chapter 14 Health and Illness
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Why Study Health and Illness?

• Our bodies are social objects
• understand the role that health (and illness)
  plays in our lives as social beings.
• Health (and illness) are social constructs
• what it means to be healthy or sick is determined
  by a society

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Types of Illnesses

• Acute diseases
• sudden onset
• may be briefly incapacitating
• curable or fatal
• Chronic diseases
• develop over a longer period of time
• may not be detected until symptoms occur

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Leading Causes of Death in U.S., 1900-2004
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Epidemiology

• Epidemiology
• Study of disease patterns
• to understand illnesses, how they spread, and how
  to treat them
• Vector organisms mosquitoes, ticks
• An epidemic
• when a significantly higher than expected number
  of cases of a disease occurs within a population
• A pandemic
• when a higher than expected number of cases of a
  disease spans a large geographic region (multiple
  countries or continents)

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Social Construction of Health and Illness

• Medicalization
• Process by which some issues that used to be seen
  as personal problems are redefined as medical
  issues
• DSM and changing definitions of mental disorders
• Other conditions?
• ADHD, alcoholism, pregnancy and child birth,
  death

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Approaches to Medical Treatment

• Curative or crisis medicine
• healthcare that treats a problem after it has
  already started
• Preventative medicine
• health care that tries to prevent or delay a
  problem
• can include making lifestyle changes
• Palliative care
• health care that focuses on symptom and pain
  relief
• not intended to provide a cure
• typically used for critically ill or dying
  patients.

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Issues in Medicine and Health Care

• What other options are there?
• Complementary medicine
• treatments, practices, or products that can be
  used with conventional Western medicine
• Alternative medicine
• treatments, practices, or products that can be
  used instead of conventional Western medicine
• Integrative medicine
• combines conventional medicine with
  complementary practices that are proven to be
  safe and effective

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Issues in Medicine and Health Care (contd)

• Health Care Reform
• Issue in culture wars
• Based on premise that we need to provide better,
  more affordable health care to all
• The Affordable Care Act 2010 (Obama-care)
• Eliminates rescission
• a policy that allows insurance companies to
  cancel a persons coverage after they get sick
• Problems
• Who pays for this?
• Is it ethical to require people to buy insurance
  or take care of themselves?

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Social Inequality, Health, and Illness

• Socioeconomic status (SES)
• Access to heath care, tests and medications, and
  nutrition
• Food deserts
• poor, urban areas without grocery stores
• difficulty in finding healthy food options
• Higher SES individuals often live longer and feel
  better than those with lower SES
• Race and gender
• Minorities and women are more likely to be poor
• Minorities are more likely to be exposed to
  harmful environment
• Men are more likely to hold hazardous jobs
• Deprivation amplification
• When the risks we already have (because of
  background or heredity) are amplified by social
  factors

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Medicine as a Social Institution

• The American Medical Association (AMA)
• transmits norms and values of medicine and
  medical knowledge
• regulates, licenses, and legitimizes
  practitioners
• polices itself and encroachment on its power

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Medicine as a Social Institution (contd)

• Doctor-patient relations
• Influenced by the structure of the institution
• The way we interact with doctors gives them
  status and power
• Cultural competence
• Consideration of a persons cultural background
  as part of the treatment process
• a patients beliefs will shape their approach to
  health care

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Medicine as a Social Institution (contd)

• The sick role
• Being sick as a form of deviance (different from
  the norm)
• Talcott Parsons (Functionalist)
• Actions and attitudes expected from someone who
  is sick
• Excused from normal responsibilities
• Imposes new responsibilities
• like seeking treatment and trying to get better

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Issues in Medicine and Health Care (contd)

• Eugenics
• an attempt to manipulate the gene pool
• to eliminate disorders
• to improve humans through medical science
• Bioethics
• the moral or ethical issues related to scientific
  or medical advancements

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Why Study Health and Illness?

• Understanding the link between social structures
  and the individual helps us understand processes
  and health outcomes
• Thinking about our values and cultural context
  helps us understand the way people perceive the
  health of individuals, society, and the planet