Preview

Biomedical Sociomedical

Satisfactory Essays
Open Document
Open Document
405 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Biomedical Sociomedical
BIOMEDICAL MODEL OF HEALTH
The biomedical model of health and illness focuses on purely biological factors, and excludes psychological, environmental, and social influences. This is considered to be the dominant, modern way for health care professionals to diagnose and treat condition of diseases in most western countries. The purpose of these health services is to mainly cure disease and the health care professionals will use scientifically tested methods such as X-ray’s, scans and blood tests. The intervention or actions taken to improve the health of an individual are through medical treatment, hospitalisation, prescriptions and surgery. http://www.wisegeek.org/what-is-the-biomedical-model.htm
The advantage of the biomedical approach is that, it makes sure that individual’s with any diseases and illness are treated and cured from the disease. The disadvantage of this approach is that, they mainly focus on the individual with diseases or illness but tend to ignore the environmental and social factors that might cause the diseases. The biomedical model fits well with the functionalist perspective because, if the individuals are ill, they would not be able to work and contribute to the functioning of the society.
SOCIO-MEDICAL MODEL OF HEALTH
The socio-medical model health looks at how society and the environment affect our everyday health and wellbeing, including factors such as social class, occupation, education, income and poverty, poor diet and pollution. For example, poor housing and poverty are causes to respiratory problems and in response to these, causes and origins of ill health. The socio-medical aims to encourage society to include better housing and introduce programmes to tackle poverty as a solution. The focus of this model is principally to explain why health inequalities exist and persist. http://www.markedbyteachers.com/as-and-a-level/sociology/biomedical-and-the-socio-medical-models-of-health.html The advantage of socio-medical model of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Best Essays

    The biomedical model, which primarily assumes that all illness arise from within the body and is caused by an initial dysfunction of a part of the body, is the current dominant model of illness. However, Biomedicine is criticised for omitting things such as lifestyle behaviours, individual needs and social support/choice. These are things that impact individual experience on Health & Social Care .…

    • 1436 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Best Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Biomedical model: it is a conceptual model of illness that excludes psychological and social factors and includes only biological factors in an attempt to understand a…

    • 513 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are many different sociological approaches towards health and ill health and they can be used in many different scenarios, such as the scenario of Aziz and Tamsela. Aziz and Tamsela have 4 young children and Tamsela’s parents are also living with them. Their house only has 3 bedrooms so will be cramped and over crowed since there is eight people living in a tiny house. Their house is in a poverty-stricken and discouraging part of London. Also, their house is in a bad state as it is damp and they find it quite costly to keep the house warm in winter since Aziz and Tamsela both don’t have a job.…

    • 1437 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    In this essay I am assessing the socio and medical models of health and to what it implies. The socio- medical model of health focuses on the social factors that contribute to health and wellbeing in society. When this model considers social factors, it particularly looks at the impact of poverty, poor housing, diet and pollution. E.g. poor housing and poverty are causes to respiratory problems, and in response to these causes origins of ill health, the socio-medical model is aimed to encourage society to include better housing and introduce programmes to tackle poverty as a solution. The biomedical model of health looks at individuals physical functioning and describes bad health and illness as the assumption of disease and…

    • 1022 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Better Essays

    The Functionalist approach to health and ill-health originates from Talcott Parsons. He says in order for society to work efficiently all the members of society need to be healthy. He sees illness as a form of deviance as the ill members are playing the sick role, if people claimed they were sick they had specific rights and new responsibilities, these included not participating in social obligations like going to school, college or work. Being cared for so family members should care for the sick member. Also, the ill member should take responsibility by trying their best to get better to continue playing their role in society and communicate with their doctor in order to get better…

    • 1512 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    In much of the world—particularly North America and Europe—the biomedicinal model is used. In this model, a patient experiences physical symptoms, and is treated for the symptoms and/or the cause of the symptoms. This model is centered around the idea that illness and disease has virtually exclusively physiological causes. A good example of this model would be having a headache, and treating it with a painkiller…

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Inequalities in the human condition, specifically health, is something that has always plagued our society. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines the conditions that a person is born into, grows, lives, work and ages as the social determinants of health. These conditions have a significant impact on the trajectory of ones quality of life; both from a physical and emotional aspect. The five focus areas under the social determinants of health include economic stability, education, social and community context, health and health care, and lastly neighborhood and built environment. These inter-connected conditions can have dire consequences on large populations of people.…

    • 250 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The medical model utilizes an objective approach that is generally agreed upon by those within the field, illness is scientific and lacking a moral or political aspect. Finally, the medical model focuses the attention on a singular or unique etiology that can be targeted for treatment. Whereas, the sociological model approaches illness from a different view and perspective. Illness is labeled in a more subjective way leaving the educated world with multiple definitions or labels -which can lead to confusion, misdiagnosis, and delayed treatment. In the sociological model illness takes on a moral and political aspect because conditions and behaviors are now deemed as abnormal or deviant straying from the 'norm'. Since the 'norm' can very within a cultural group and groups with more power can guide the prevalence often illness label being applied to an undesirable group or the 'other'. Sociological illness models carry a political component that is not present in the medical model. Finally, the sociological model of illness attributes multiple sources as the cause of the illness: social, biological, psychological, etc (Wietz,…

    • 1430 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The biopsychosocial approaches to treatment are broadly speaking holistic. Biological psychological and social factors are all incorporated into individual patient assessment. The biopsychosocial model of medicine is a way of looking at the mind and body of a patient as two important systems that are interlinked. The biopsychosocial model is also a technical term for the popular concept of the mind-body connection. This is in contrast to the traditional biomedical model of medicine. The biopsychosocial model draws a distinction between the actual pathological processes that cause 'disease ', and the patient 's perception of their health and the effects on it, called the illness. As well as a separate existence of disease and illness, the biopsychosocial model states that the workings of the body can affect the mind, and the workings of the mind can affect the body. Gilbert.P (2002) stated…

    • 3319 Words
    • 14 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Health is essential to living a comfortable and fulfilling life, however it’s not granted to everyone as health is determined by various economic and social factors, also known as social determinants of health. Social determinants of health affect the health of the individual, communities and jurisdiction as a whole; consequently it is in charge of determining the extent to which a person can access physical, social and personal resources to health (Hobbs & Rice 2013, p.456). Understanding social determinants of health will help human service providers such as Social Workers to have greater awareness of how structural system and social context creates patterns of inequalities for certain population, resulting in poor health (Sowers & Dulmus…

    • 1994 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Sociology and Social Care

    • 2824 Words
    • 18 Pages

    Sociologists argue that health and illness have two aspects to them. The first of these is biological, and there…

    • 2824 Words
    • 18 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The social determinants of health can be defined as “characteristics of health and the pathways by which conditions around us affect health” (Macdougall, 2012).Another example is ‘Health’ is a very broad notion, affected by a wide range of individual characteristics, behaviours and contextual factors. Those contextual factors that fall within social, economic and environmental domains are usually referred to as ‘the social determinants of health.” (alliance, may 2011) The conditions are those that are the underlying principles to either good or poor health. While they vary upon the communities of the world, three characteristics makeup for the majority of the world’s populations underlying medical issues. The person’s environment, their income and their housing must be overseen before a medical professional can deem this person to be healthy.…

    • 1215 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Determinants Of Health

    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Good health follows a social gradient and typically flows in the positive direction with increasing socioeconomic status; The importance of the social (as opposed to biological or genetic) causes of this increase for example, housing quality, access to healthcare or quality of work, has also been established. This has led to increasing pressure in research, practice and policy-making environments to investigate these wider social determinants of health, through the implementation of appropriate interventions, and thereby reducing the gradient and health…

    • 1053 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Inequalities in health have many factors but these can be argued against as to whether they are the actual cause. Social class is a factor, along with region, age, gender, ethnicity etc. Measuring the impact of social class is difficult because social classes have changed over the years, eg) working class living conditions have changed, and there is a delay in the onset of diseases, eg) Asbestos related illness. (NICE 2009)…

    • 709 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Functionalism explains health and medicine by looking at how each individual who is ill affects the flow and function…

    • 949 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Better Essays

Related Topics