12 + 1 key words for Medical Sociology
Antonio Maturo
Universita` di Bologna
Roots
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Engels
Durkheim
Parsons
Foucault
Illich
relatives
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Anthropology
Epidemiology / public health
Psychology
Economics
Organization studies
Bioethics
WHO (1948)
• Health is a state of complete physical, mental
and social well-being and not merely the
absence of disease or infirmity.
1. Inequality
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Money
Education
Life expectancy
Morbidy
Access to care
2. Social determinants of health
3. Social capital
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Networks
Associations
Access to information
Social support
Trust
4. Social construction of health and
illness
• Social representations of normality and
pathology
• If men define situations as real, they are real
in their consequences. (Thomas, 1928)
• Stigma
• Social exclusion
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
5. Disease, illness, sickness （Twaddle,
Mechanic, Kleinman)
• Disease can be considered as the bio-medical
definition of a pathology;
• illness coincides with subjective feelings of
pain or anxiety and on the subjective
interpretation of the pathological state
• sickness as the way by which society
interprets a personal condition.
6. Disability
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Chronic diseases
Stigma
Normality-pathology
Aging (ageism)
Social construction of disability
Welfare state….
7. Health care organization
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Welfare state
Taxes
Providers of care
Role of the State
Private/public providers / finance
Health expenditure
8. Patient-physician relationship
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Asymmetry - Power
Communication
Information
Compliance
Health literacy
9.Medicalization
• ‘Once upon a time, plenty of children were unruly, some adults were shy,
and bald men wore hats. Now all of these descriptions might be attributed
to diseases – entities with names, diagnostic criteria, and an increasing
array of therapeutic options’. McLellan (2007, p.627).
• the process through which a non-medical
problem is defined as a disease or a
disorder” (Conrad, 2007, p. 4).
10.Brain-Neuroscience
11. Body
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Disability
Human enhancement
Eating disorders
Cosmetic surgery
Cyborg
12. Medicine
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Power
Extension and expansion of borders
Health industrial complex
Big pharma
Bigger role in our life
+ 1: Internet
• Apps
• Social network
• Telemedicine