CONSIDERACIONES EPISTEMOLÓGICAS

MEDICALIZATION AS THE PHENOMENON THAT CONTROLS SOCIETY: AN INTEGRATIVE REVIEW (Atena Editora), 2022

Introduction: The medicalization process is difficult for society to understand. Objective: with the aim of understanding the perception of Brazilian researchers in relation to the phenomenon of medicalization of society, this study was carried out based on the analysis of the scientific production of the last ten years on this subject. Methods: This is an integrative review, in the Scielo, Bireme, Pubmed and Google Scholar databases using “medicalization” or “medicalization of society” as descriptors. From this search, 37 articles were found. Results: The search in the databases and analysis of the articles was carried out from November 2018 to January 2019. From this analysis of the 37 articles obtained, the sample was composed of 27 articles after the delimitation determined by the inclusion criteria and exclusion of articles and removal of articles obtained repeatedly from more than one database. Discussion: Data were subdivided into subtopics for better understanding. Medicalization as a strategy for pain, medicalization and sexuality, medicalization and the health and disease process. Conclusion: From the analysis of the articles, it was observed that although medicalization has its origin in the seventeenth century, it is a phenomenon that affects contemporary society and is still insufficiently addressed by researchers.

Societies

This article seeks to capture variations and tensions in the relationships between the health–illness–medicine complex and society. It presents several theoretical reconstructions, established theses and arguments are reassessed and criticized, known perspectives are realigned according to a new theorizing narrative, and some new notions are proposed. In the first part, we argue that relations between the medical complex and society are neither formal–abstract nor historically necessary. In the second part, we take the concept of medicalization and the development of medicalization critique as an important example of the difficult coalescence between health and society, but also as an alternative to guide the treatment of these relationships. Returning to the medicalization studies, we suggest a new synthesis, reconceptualizing it as a set of modalities, including medical imperialism. In the third part, we endorse replacing a profession-based approach to medicalization with a knowle...

Scientific Journal “Newsletter on the results of scholarly work in sociology, criminology, philosophy and political science”, 2024

Representatives of the medicalization thesis in sociology propose that in modernity the human condition is increasingly translated into quantified and medical terms. Problems are increasingly reduced to issues of individual and public health. On the one hand, this results in an increase of government intervention in the lives of citizens, concentrating power in the hands of experts, while politics legitimates itself via medical expertise. On the other hand, subjects themselves demand medicalization as a form of recognition. Medicalization as a sociological paradigm problematizes the modern drive to construct issues in medical terms. However there are no easy answers, as alternative medicine too is a form of medicalization. More reflexivity is warranted when it comes to problematization and categorization of phenomena associated with the human condition.

This article attempts to outline a history of the critique of medicalization that developed in the 1960s in the work of Thomas Szasz, R. D. Laing, Michael Foucault, and others that was applied in their work to medical and psychiatric theory and practice, the penal system, and public health systems. This article follows the development of Foucault's own work on "governmentality" that emphasized the individualization and internalization of the themes of medicalization and the application of these ideas by his disciples to contemporary medical developments. Finally, the author explores recent historiography in the history of medicine and public health that supports this thesis of individualization that both undermines and reconfigures the older notion of medicalization. ᭧ 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Medicine, Healthcare, and Philosophy, 2014

Many critics of medicalization (the process by which phenomena become candidates for medical definition, explanation and treatment) express concern that the process privileges individualised, biologically-grounded interpretations of medicalized phenomena, inhibiting understanding and communication of aspects of those phenomena that are less relevant to their biomedical modelling. I suggest that this line of critique views medicalization as a hermeneutical injustice – a form of epistemic injustice that prevents people having the hermeneutical resources available to interpret and communicate significant areas of their experience. Interpreting the critiques in this fashion shows they frequently fail because they: neglect the ways in which medicalization may not obscure, but rather illuminate, individuals’ experiences; and neglect the testimony of those experiencing first-hand medicalized problems, thus may be guilty of perpetrating testimonial injustice. However, I suggest that such arguments are valuable insofar as they highlight the unwarranted epistemic privilege frequently afforded to medical institutions and medicalized models of phenomena, and a consequent need for greater epistemic humility on the part of health workers and researchers.

MEDICALIZATION OF LIFE: CRITICAL THINKING OF HEALTH ACTION FROM THE MEDICALIZATION OF LIFE (Atena Editora), 2023

This article aims to think about different aspects that surround the phenomenon of medicalization, considering the health-disease process and the pathologization of life. The theoretical construction was based on critical perspectives that questioned attitudes and ways of thinking about the medicalization/pathologization of life, which are crystallized in society in the form of its most diverse norms for classifying health and normality. The process of medicalization/pathologization of life is growing not only in Brazil, but throughout the world, a topic that needs to be discussed with due caution so as not to spread practices linked to medicalization. For this study, a bibliographical review was carried out, with the purpose of obtaining and analyzing information in a qualitative way, presenting discussions thinking about the performance of the various areas of health, including psychology, where medicalization is delineated and defined, addressing aspects aimed at criticism social control, health and disease processes and the capitalist system as having a strong influence on the processes of medicalization/pathologization.

Medicalization has been one of the most important topics for feminist agenda and gender studies. During the second wave of feminism, when sexual and reproductive rights were the top concerns for women, is exactly when the studies of medicalization started to grow. The goal of this research is to present some characteristics of the studies that are concerned with the gendered medicalized body by indicating how the medicalization process has been explained, understood and interlaced with different institutions and people. One main concern in this review is to pay attention to how gender is expressed in medicalization studies. Within a qualitative design, and the support of SPSS™, we constructed a mapping review on the literature published in books, and thereafter we developed a content analysis of the chapters on medicalization. An overview of the characteristics of the studies are presented, and after two categories are discussed: (a) meanings of medicalization and (b) medicalizing bodies and its entrepreneurs: a rhizomatic expression. It was concluded the medicalization thesis should be considered as one line of a "rhizome" that connects to different actors, corporations and organizations. In deconstructing the rhizome, the analytical category gender should be understood as a socio-historical construction related to relations of domination and to resistance as well. Also, the medicalization authors should be sensitive to the epistemologies of the Global South. Key words: health, mapping review, medicalizing bodies, social medicine, sociology of health. Resumen La medicalización ha sido uno de los temas más importantes para la agenda feminista y para los estudios de género. Durante la segunda ola del feminismo, cuando los derechos sexuales y reproductivos eran las principales preocupaciones para las mujeres, es el momento exacto en cual los estudios sobre la medicalización comenzaron a aumentar. El objetivo de esta investigación es presentar algunas características de los estudios relacionados con el cuerpo medicalizado y generizado, indicando cómo se ha explicado, entendido y entrelazado el proceso de medicalización con diferentes instituciones y personas. Una preocupación principal en esta revisión es prestar atención a cómo se expresa el género en los estudios de medicalización. Dentro de un diseño cualitativo, y con el apoyo de SPSS™, construimos una revisión preliminar sobre la literatura publicada en libros, y luego desarrollamos un análisis de contenido de los capítulos sobre medicalización. Se presenta una descripción general de las características de los estudios, y después se discuten dos categorías: (a) los significados de la medicalización y (b) los cuerpos medicalizados y sus emprendedores: una expresión rizomática. Se concluyó que la tesis de medicalización debería considerarse como la línea de un "rizoma" que se conecta con diferentes actores, corporaciones y organizaciones. Al deconstruir el rizoma, la categoría analítica del género debe entenderse como una construcción sociohistórica relacionada con las relaciones de dominación y también con las de resistencia. Además, los autores que tratan sobre la medicalización deben ser sensibles a las epistemologías del Sur Global. Palabras clave: Salud, revisión preliminar, cuerpos medicalizados, medicina social, sociología de la salud. Sumario

The Influence of Edmund D. Pellegrino’s Philosophy of Medicine, 1997

In spite of the seminal work A Philosophical Basis of Medical Practice, the debate on the task and goals of philosophy of medicine still continues. From an European perspective it is argued that the main topics dealt with by Pellegrino and Thomasma are still particularly relevant to medical practice as a healing practice, while expressing the need for a philosophy of medicine. Medical practice is a discursive practice which is highly influenced by other discursive practices like science, law and economics. Philosophical analysis of those influences is needed to discern their effect on the goals of medicine and on the ways in which the self-image of man may be changed. The nature of medical practice and discourse itself makes it necessary to include different philosophical disciplines, like philosophy of science, of law, ethics, and epistemology. Possible scenario's of euthanasia and the human genome project in the USA and Europe are used to exemplify how philosopy of medicine can contribute to a realistic understanding of the problems which are related to the goals of medicine and health care.

. Socio-economic Inequities and the Health Sector, 2014

Medicalization, an international phenomenon for some time now, has been responsible for proliferation of diseases and prescription of medical solutions by increasingly extending the medical categories to multiple aspects of people's lives. It has been further encouraged by pharmaceuticalization, biomedicalization and geneticization. Medicine still holds the centre stage in the process of medicalization but, along with it, the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries, the health-care markets and the aspirations of human desire, rather than a quest for health, have been accountable for the medicalization and overmedicalization of society. A deleterious result of disregarding the social context of complicated problems and educating people that non-diseases are diseases, have resulted in an increase in consumption of unnecessary drugs and diagnostic procedures. The possibility of meaningful health care reforms has therefore become problematical, especially in 'a pill for every ill' cultural disposition that is created, promoted and sustained by unbridled medicalization.

Social Science & Medicine, 1987

This paper raises the question of the ethically proper balance in health care policy between the medical-clinical-high technology model of health service and the grass-roots, community based or traditional models of care. Paradoxical imblances between the two approaches are traced to political, economic or prestige factors. Case studies examined include the hospitalization of non-contagious leprosy patients while protecting the anonymity of AIDS-infected prostitutes, medical resistance to the adoption of a clinical role by Community Cancer Centers, and the continued preference in some quarters for elaborate (and often delayed) hospital treatment for such problems as infant diarrhea, despite the availability of much simpler solutions, as in the case of the widely successful oral rehydration therapy.