Medicalization

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Medicalization is the name for a social change process in which human life experiences and areas of life move into the focus of systematic medical research and responsibility that were previously outside of medicine. This was mainly observed and described since the middle of the 18th century, but can still be seen today. The concept is largely due to Ivan Illich .

In the history of medicine , the term medicalization is mostly used descriptively, i.e. without evaluation. It also expresses a fundamental criticism of the belief in progress and feasibility within the natural sciences. The cause and driving force behind these changes, however, is seen as an interaction between all those involved in the health system - including patients and competing medical professions - with the aim of achieving the best possible care for the population.

Examples of medicalization tendencies:

  • the pathologization of mood disorders and matters that are also determined by many social factors (e.g. sexual aversion, childlessness) and their medical treatment
  • the female body, especially its sexuality (through specific knowledge production and regulations on menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth and menopause)
  • the increasing range of medical services for the "optimization" of lifestyle instead of just treating ailments (e.g. anti-aging medicine, cosmetic surgery )
  • the tendency to transfer responsibility to doctors and the health system , as well as the (self-) incapacitation of people with minor complaints, questions of well-being and with natural life phenomena ( birth , death )

See also

literature

  • Michel Foucault : The birth of social medicine , in: ders., Writings in four volumes. Dits and Ecrits. Vol. 3: 1976-1979. Frankfurt 2003, pp. 272-298.
  • Ivan Illich : The Nemesis of Medicine. The criticism of the medicalization of life. Beck, Munich 1995, ISBN 3-406-39204-0
  • Roy Porter: The patient's view. Doing medical history from below. Theory and Society 14 (1985) 175-198
  • Michael Stolberg : Medicine between the state and the population. Offer and acceptance of medical care in Upper Franconia in the early 19th century. Diss. Med. Technical University of Munich 1986
  • Michael Stolberg: The History of Palliative Medicine. Medical care for the dying from 1500 until today. Mabuse-Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2011, ISBN 978-3-940529-79-4 , pp. 258-261 ( medicalization ).
  • Francisca Loetz: From the sick to the patient. “Medicalization” and medical socialization using the example of Baden 1750–1850. Stuttgart 1993 (= medicine, society and history. Supplement 2).
  • Sami Timimi: Pathological Child Psychiatry and the Medicalization of Childhood , Brunner-Routledge, 2002, ISBN 1-58391-216-9
  • Irving Kenneth Zola : Health mania and incapacitating medicalization, in: Illich, Ivan U. a., Incapacitation through experts , Reinbek near Hamburg 1979
  • "Battle for the Heart - Neoliberal Reform Attempts and Power Relations in the 'Health Industry'", special issue of the magazine "contradictions", issue 94, 2004.
  • Peter Conrad: The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 2007

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ivan Illich: Medical nemesis: the expropriation of health, London: Calder & Boyars, 1975.
  2. ↑ Hans-Christoph Seidel: A new 'culture of giving birth': the medicalization of birth in the 18th and 19th centuries in Germany. (Phil. Dissertation Bielefeld) Franz Steiner, Stuttgart 1998 (= Medicine, Society and History , Supplement 11), ISBN 3-515-07075-3 .
  3. ↑ Krüger-Fürhoff, Irmela Marei: Body, in: Christina von Braun u. Inge Stephan (ed.): Gender @ Knowledge. A handbook of gender theories. Cologne u. a. 2009, 66–81, here 68.