Ivan Illich's View Of Over Medicalization

Conrad, as above detailed - bought forward the base understanding that medicalization is the medical manipulation of deviant behaviors and daily life events. Irving Zola elaborates further, claiming that these manipulations are used to benefit individuals or groups of individuals in more than just physiological ways by aiding wider social or political agendas and expectations into what is deemed acceptable [Zola, 1972]. This concept can be used to explain the surge in the number of different diagnosed medical conditions over the last couple of decades. Behavioral patterns that have been otherwise been noted as sinful or criminal now diagnosed as medical by nature, transitioning them from undesirable to ill. This can be highlighted with children
The idea that medical experts – those accredited with the role of improving the health of individuals; are intentionally conceptualizing issues that don’t concern medical or health related thinking - as deep-rooted into an individual’s health and well-being. Exploitation of society’s otherwise non-medical issues have lead some sociologists to believing that Medicalization is the worst thing that can happen to an individuals health [illich, 1976]. Ivan Illich’s argument views medicalization from the perspective of the public and the patients diagnosed. Good health isn’t just the absence of disease, instead it is considered complete Mental, physical and social soundness [WHO, 1984]. Illich makes the point that health as concept should be managed by individuals, with the process of medicalization growing to be more prevalent in society this becomes more difficult. Increases in the number of issues that weren’t previously approached as medical in nature such as: Menopause, Sleeping Disorders and obesity to name a few [Blackburn, 2009], mean individuals must allow medical experts to interlude with their personal, physical selves. Addressing earlier societies as private and accommodated with interaction occurring between just a single expert and patients over-issues that were deemed medically serious. Illich however, did acknowledge that this newly medicalized
This can be put to the social trends of society; health is becoming and has become a productized, an entire marketplace has been generated around treatments and diagnostics [Turner, 2004]. The new healthcare reform is no-longer considered an issue of public-policy instead it is seen as a matter concerning public-finance, for which a business plan must be followed. To help accommodate the increase in medicalized issues in a socio-economic context for its consumers, who are becoming more educated in medical terminology for analysis and improvement of their own personal health by modems such as TV and the internet [Clovin, 2012] [Barker, 2008]. One example of this would be the projection of conceptually medicalized ideas in media outposts, encouraging people to consider their health in ways they would have otherwise overlooked. Medicalizations prevalence in today’s society can also be explained by ever advancing technologies; new tools are made available, increasing the number of new diagnostics, providing empirical evidence that conditions that may not have been deemed medical, have medical aspects. The issue advancing technologies bring to the medical society is the myth that medicine can heal everything, delaying death – given the sufficient time and funding. Consequently leading individuals to believe that medicine has completely overcome disease, forgetting