Sociology Being ill is not a simple thing! Why do sociologists see it as being a problem? When we think of health and illness, there is a general conception that it involves health habits such as exercise and eating the right food, as well as institutions such as hospitals and doctors. In Western societies it is commonly accepted that if we are ill it is a result of an infectious disease that can be cured by modern medicine, or is a result of genetics or lifestyle choices. Sociologists propose a different cause.
It creates low expectations and leads to people losing independence, choice and control in their own lives. They are disempowered: medical diagnoses are used to regulate and control access to social benefits, housing, education, leisure and employment. The medical model promotes the view of a disabled person as dependent and needing to be cured or cared for, and it justifies the way in which disabled people have been systematically excluded from society. The disabled person is the problem, not society. Control resides firmly with professionals as choices for the individual are limited to the options provided and approved by the 'helping' expert.
(Giddens 1989) This model of health looks at individual physical functioning and describes disease and illness as a result of physical causes such as injury or infections. The model focuses on the treatment rather than the prevention. It does not take into account the role of a person's mind or society in the treatment. (Senior and Viveash 1998) It is for reducing the treating of morbidity of unhealthy, disease conditions and premature death and focuses on the removal of illness through diagnosis and effective treatment which makes it useful for helping ill patients. (Webb and Tossell 1999) In the biomedical model of health a critical
It is very persistence and can be termed as a irrational fear of certain situations or objects (Medicine.net, 2000) INTRODUCTION: Erving Goffman and Michael Foucault are social scientists trying to explain that how social order is created in a society and where is it originated from. To start with let me talk about who creates social order so according to Goffman the people in the way of living and actions in their day to day life determines the social order. INTERACTION ORDER According to Goffman social interaction is a deliberate interaction between the person and the social entities and environment. The behaviour and the style of a person depend on the impression he wants to create in the minds of the other person. The social interaction is manipulated.
Sociological perspective of health posits that society depends on healthy people to function properly and also help to control illness (Parsons, 1975). Parsons identified the sick role of a person which demonstrates a condition of an ill person and its impact on society. He used four components to identify the state of an ill person role. Parson suggests that, for a person to assume a sick role the individual should not be held responsible for being sick, be exempted from normal duties, the person should be seeking help to get out of the role because the individual should not like being in the position of a sick role. However the theory of social stratification does not favour the sick role theory because it is not realistic for some class of people who may need a
SS OP 2.1 Introductory awareness of models of disability 1. Know the difference between the medical and social models of disability. 1.1 Describe the medical model of disability The social model of disability says that disability is caused by the way society is organised. The medical model of disability says people are disabled by their impairments or differences. Under the medical model, these impairments or differences should be 'fixed' or changed by medical and other treatments, even when the impairment or difference does not cause pain or illness.
To achieve P2: Describe the concept of health and ill health and explain how to carry out a holistic assessment. Explain the following different sociological approaches to health and ill health and how they apply to health and social care: The functionalist approach; The Marxist Approach; social action approach; The feminist approach You will need to produce a PowerPoint presentation which describes the bases of discrimination. You will then describe discriminatory practice in health and social care settings. Use examples to illustrate your points Members of staff have been asking why they should be aware of discrimination and you have decided to design a document to look at the potential effects of discrimiYou may wish to add to your document a thorough review of the effects of discriminatory practice. You will have to examine the effects of three different discriminatory practices in care settings.
The medical model looks at the body as a machine, where if it were to break down, a doctor would take on the role of an engineer and attempt to fix it. Unlike the social model, the medical model of health does not take into account social aspects which can also have an effect on health and illness. The social model of health tends to focus on sociological factors, linking illness to things such as poverty, poor housing and unemployment. Eg, the impact that poverty and social class has on illness and health are reflected in life expectancy figures. Although life expectancy in the UK has risen, there is still a gap in life expectancy between the middle class and the working class.
Culture shapes people’s perceptions of the causes and manifestations of health, disease and illness. To prove this I will firstly explain how the ways in which people seek to enhance health and prevent disease are rooted in their individual culture and belief systems; how the norms and values prevalent in a society define the experience of illness; how a person’s help seeking behaviour is cultural based; how reactions to treatment is shaped by cultural factors; the significance of cultural differences in the interpretation of symptoms as well as the response to them; how pain behaviour is socially learnt; and how in the context of South African healing systems it can be argued that different healing systems are rooted in the cultural differences and linked to the dominant values in a particular culture. The ways in which people seek to enhance health and prevent disease are rooted in their individual culture and belief systems. This can be seen from disease aetiology. To most Americans it is believed that germs cause disease.
By focusing on the social determinants of health within a population, i.e. the living conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work and age and shortfalls in the country’s health system, we can target social inequalities and achieve health equity within countries (WHO, 2008). Whereas biomedicine focuses on the medical causes of disease, the social determinants of health approach looks beyond these boundaries and instead focuses on the social origins influencing people’s health status (Germov, 2009, p.15). In a recent report, the National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission ([NHHRCC], 2009) determined food and nutrition to be a crucial aspect in the