...Medicalization of Marijuana The Stigma of a Miracle Drug March 25, 2014 Synopsis The following media review is based on a two part documentary which focuses on the healing qualities of medical marijuana in the treatment of Dravet’s syndrome along with a number of other illnesses. I researched the benefits of medical marijuana, specifically the medicalization of the plant and its derivatives. This includes the extraction and ingestion of cannabis oil in its pure form for the treatment of Dravet’s syndrome, a form of chronic epilepsy often found in children. This paper focuses on the history of the use of cannabis for its healing properties and provides a brief overview of the documentary which is the basis of the paper, detailing the importance of the medicalization of the cannabis plant for use in treating a number of ailments, including but not limited to the treatment of Dravet’s Syndrome and Autism in children. It was not until I watched the documentary which was recently aired on CNN entitled “Weed, Cannabis Madness” and its sequel “Weed 2” that I became interested in the healing qualities that this plant possesses and more specifically, its ability to treat children who are suffering from a condition called Dravet’s Syndrome. Dravet’s Syndrome is a form of chronic epilepsy which causes children to seize violently for upwards of 50 seizures per day. There is no cure for this disease, and for many children the drugs prescribed by their physicians such as...
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...Medicalization of Obesity Obesity is measured by the level of a person’s body mass index (BMI), and is determined based on an individual’s height and weight. As noted in Sternheimer’s Connecting Social Problems and Popular Culture, “between 1980 and 2000, the number of children classified as overweight doubled for those aged two through eleven and tripled for adolescents twelve to nineteen” (198). In addition, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention presents separate statistics for obese and overweight individuals in order to bring urgency to what they claim as a problem. As claimsmakers, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention insist that the problem is getting worse by noting that it is an “obesity epidemic,” and categorizes the overweight population as part of the epidemic (Best 127). As a result, society begins to frame this social problem by medicalization. Moreover, Andrew Pollack from The New York Times notes that the American Medical Association has officially medicalized obesity as a disease in his article titled, “A.M.A. Recognizes Obesity as a Disease” (Pollack). Thus, I will attempt to discuss the medicalization of obesity and how it affects society. Medicalization is one of the ways in which to frame a social problem. To clarify, medicalization transpires when previously nonmedical issues become defined and regarded as medical problems (Blackburn 895). However, the real question is—will medicalizing obesity as a disease actually address this problem...
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...Medicalization and Psychologisation: The Need for a Specialty in Women’s Health For centuries, women’s health has been compromised by technologies and practices that stem from outdated androcentric philosophies and theories about women’s reproductive systems and women’s “nature”. Let us consider the following; vulva is from the Latin pudere meaning “to be ashamed of”; estrogen is from the Greek oistros “insane desire”; and hysterectomy is from the Greek hysteria meaning “belonging to the womb”. In today’s day and age, women’s health continues to be threatened by a male dominated medical model of health care. Evidence of this can be found in the medicalization and the psychologisation of women’s health. This essay examines both of these practices and how they relate to the need for a specialty in women’s health. It also suggests how these issues can be mitigated. The Need for a Specialty in Women’s Health The more you depend on forces outside of yourself, the more you are dominated by them. Harold Sherman The need for a specialty devoted to women’s health can be attributed to a profound male bias within the medical model of health care that ignores women’s total health needs and therefore threatens their health. Women have often been short changed by medicine when it comes to research, drug trials, the safety of medical products as well as the diagnosing and treatment of their health conditions. Using research as an example, we find that it has traditionally...
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...The Medicalization of Adult ADHD Richard W Hall Schreiner Professional Nursing Issues - Ethics NURS 4201 01 N Professor L. Kendrick November 27, 2015 The Medicalization of Adult ADHD You buy another organizing system, to organize your last five organizing systems. You just know this system will be the one to finally get your life in order. Maybe. Could I be ADHD? The person sitting beside you grabs your attention, but so does the heating unit shutting on and off, the fluorescent light flickering above you, and a bird flying by the window! Could I be ADHD? While considering your answer to your boss’ question, you wonder what’s for supper. .. I’m sorry. What was that question again? Could I be ADHD? Funny situations, serious question. Adult Attention Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) has been the subject of much debate over the past 50 years. In the 19th century children with signs and symptoms like ADHD, if not labeled bad/problem children, could get the diagnosis neurasthenia. In the first half of the 20th century, before the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM)-1, published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), came out in 1952, children with similar symptoms may have been diagnosed as having hyperkinetic disorder if not considered bad/problem children. After the DSM-1, ADHD was referred to as minimal brain damage (MBD). The DSM-II in 1968, referred to ADHD as MBD but said it might continue into adolescence. Attention Deficit...
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...pre-reproduction and post; these women were asked about menstruation, birth, contraceptive methods, menopause, and so on. * Demonstrates how “she may well experience what is in effect as taboo on the development of her human capacities.” (p. 21). This demonstrates how the science behind medicalization can be harsh, impersonal and certainty objective towards the female body. Conrad, P. (2007). The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2(1), 23-27 * Male medicalization is focused upon certain aspects such as andropause, baldness, and sexual performance such erectile dysfunction. Since the market of sexual enhancers such as Viagara (sildenafil citrate), medicalization has definitely taken charge. * Women have been the primary target in medicalization for numerous reasons, both physiologically and mentally. Mainly, women have the tendency to be more vulnerable to be exposed to medicalization in order to meet the definition of a “healthy body” * Argues that “numerous medical testosterone-based treatments have been offered to alleviate this “disorder”. (p. 25). Many parties contribute to medicalization of the male bodies,...
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...evidence of certain political machines at work. But people struggle with seeing deeper into how government affects not only their day to day lives, but their very bodies. I'm talking about the intersection of private science and government-”bio politics”. To engage in a such discussion of Bio-politics and how political power is exerted over life, one needs a firm knowledge of medicalization. In a broad sense, medicalization is simply the expansion of medicine in our society. However, the term is interpreted differently depending on who you ask. Sociologist Peter Conrad describes medicalization as a “process by which medical problems become more defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illness and disorders.” He sees the power in language and how the ever expanding categories that come from medicalization are actually a form of social control. Disability activist Irving Zola validates this idea but adds that “everyday life has come under Medical dominion, influence, and supervision.” Having been stricken by polio, Zola spoke from a specific group that has come under the affects of medicalization. His primary focus and fear were the moral consequences that these categories and labels had on both individuality and morality. In addition, he advocated for people to own their disability and not succumb to the power of medical institutions to decide what is “normal”. Adele Clarke takes a slightly different approach in...
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...E-mail: k.zulufkar.amu@gmail.com, Tel.: 8171286053 Accepted 10 December, 2013 The concept of medicalization emerged from the intellectual and social turmoil of the 1950s and 1960s as a critique of medicine as authoritarian and the expansion of its conceptual model to the analysis of social ills and attendant policy. “Medicalization” refers the process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illness and disorders”. This review is based mainly on three objectives; (a) first is to explain the nature of medicalization- i.e. what medicalization actually is and why there is need of de-medicalization, (b) second is to explain the how the medicalization has negative effects on the health of people- i.e. ‘the medical establishment has become a major threat to health’ and providing a dossier of medicine’s adverse effects – the wrongs and harms it has done – through processes of clinical, social and cultural ‘iatrogenesis’ or doctor-induced conditions, and finally (c) third is to explain the impact of the dominance of professional medical power on the people’s lives especially including women. This paper is mostly based on the secondary sources such as books, articles, journals, papers, reports etc. Besides this some data has been collected from online sources. Key words: Medicalization, De-medicalization, Re-medicalization, Power, Caesarean section delivery. INTRODUCTION The concept of...
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...in a single dose. In the case of penicillin, half of the dose is used in children under 10 years of age than in adults. There is no vaccine against yaws that prevents its appearance. The prevention of this disease is aimed at interrupting the transmission between people through early diagnosis, thus avoiding contagion. Discussion (I defined both) Medicalization is a social process through which a human state or condition is considered as treatable as a medical condition. As example, obesity, alcoholism, childhood hyperactivity all been defined as medical problems that are, as a result, treated by doctors. In current society, medicalization can be motivated by one of three cultural factors: new evidence or medical observations about mental or behavioral conditions; changing economic or social attitudes; or through the development of new medical technology, treatments, and medications. The concept of "pharmaceuticalization", which can be defined as the transformation of human conditions, capacities into opportunities for pharmacological interventions. Although pharmaceuticalization has a lot of common points with medicalization, it differs from the other because it is not necessarily linked to some kind of medical diagnosis, as shown by the growing phenomenon of medication use without a therapeutic indication. Pharmaceuticalization creates identities around the use of certain drugs, in addition to reinforcing the idea of "a pill for every ill", thereby expanding the pharmaceutical...
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...jalender@capellauniversity.edu Instructor: Professor Jennifer Worley Over the past forty years there has been an dramatic increase in the diagnosis of ADHD and ADD in children and adults. There is a dramatic impact on children and their families once the child is diagnosised and labeled as ADHD. The medical industry and pharmaceutical companies have been benefiting from the diagnosis of child and adults with ADHD with the prescriptions of medication and overutilization. ADHD can be considered the medicalization of deviance when the diagnosis removes responsibility from society and the individual who has deviant behavior. This attitude continues the perpetual production of perpetrators of deviance. Medicalization is by definition the extension of medical jurisdiction or the expansion of medical boundaries. Medicalization studies reveal how nonmedical problems become diagnosis as medical. Current perceptions of ADHD and the treatment can be seen as the medicalization of deviance by taking away the accountability of the actions. An example of this deviant behavior is a 38 year old security guard has had 128 job since leaving college. He was diagnosed with ADHD. There is no background given on why the guard was diagnosis with ADHD, but if he didn't show up for work or was lazy that may be a reason for why he had some many job in 15 years not because of ADHD. "Adult ADHD has now become the foremost self-diagnosed condition in my practice . I fear that the condition can...
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...Emergency Department Responses to Battered Women: Resistance to Medicalization Author(s): Demie Kurz Source: Social Problems, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Feb., 1987), pp. 69-81 Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for the Study of Social Problems Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/800730 Accessed: 16-09-2015 04:38 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Oxford University Press and Society for the Study of Social Problems are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Problems. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 165.193.178.74 on Wed, 16 Sep 2015 04:38:26 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Emergency Department Responses to Battered Women: Resistance to Medicalization* DEMIE KURZ, PhiladelphiaHealth ManagementCorporation to "-the injuryof womenby husbandsand medicalresponses "battering are Reformers attemptingto restructure boyfriends-by encouraginghealth care personnelto identifyand intervenein cases involvingbatteredwomen...
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...Misophonia, sleeplessness, and FAS are all case studies of medicalization that we examined in class and in our resources. First, discuss what each is and who the major claimsmaker for each condition is. Second, provide a closer examination of how each is a case that can be examined through the lens of critical medicalization. Lastly, sociologically, can you think of something that makes these cases similar? What makes them different? Misophonia: A strong dislike or hatred of specific sounds. Also known as selective sound sensitivity syndrome, starts with a trigger. It’s often an oral sound, the noise someone makes when they eat, breathe, chew, yawn, or whistle. Sometimes a small repititive motion is the cause, someone fidgets, jostles you,...
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...Dysfunction article * Caitlin - Read and create a discussion question for the FAS article 1. Have groups present advertisements on types of illness that already exist with their correlating treatments. * Asthma- Albuterol inhaler * Adhd- Adderall * Depression- Prozac * Sexual dysfunction- Cialis * Birth control- ParaGard * Weightless- Suprenza * Will give list of description of drugs, side effects and cost * Want to see how the students would portray the medicine compared to how media does. * Show how media portrays medicine after they present?? Important: People who actually are experiencing extremes of an illness, benefit from medicalization, however people who experience mild symptoms of an illness, medicalization in the long run, hurts more than it helps 2. Have groups choose a condition at random and then create a medicine for which would treat and ultimately medicalize the condition and advertise it: * Hangover syndrome (prevents every having to experience a hangover * Cravings Disease (stops all cravings for carbs/sweets) * Body Hair overgrowth disorder (prevent hair growth on abdomen, back, butt) * Short syndrome (grow 5 inches in 5 months) * Chronic teeth loss (have your teeth forever) * Need one more! Iva any ideas? * Conditions given are normal things that people today deal with but the students are now going to medicalize them. * Will give...
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...Medicalization refers to the process in which “nonmedical problems are defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illnesses or disorders” (Conrad, 2004: 158). Deafness fits into this definition in that those who are culturally Deaf do not see their deafness as a medical issue. Consequently, deafness is often viewed through a medical framework because it goes against the image of the idealized normal and healthy body. To medicalize members of a certain group is to regard and interact with them within a framework of our cultural conception of bodily defects. The biological sciences and the health and social welfare professions are institutions primarily associated with this conceptual paradigm (Kelleher, 2017). To apply a cultural model to a certain group of people garners a different conceptual framework, focusing on the interdependent values, traditions and language that characterize this culture. It also questions how the physical and social environment in which it is embedded influences it. A medicalization model can be appropriate for someone who lost their hearing later in life due to things like age or illness. It is more common for them to view deafness as a loss and that they are now less than whole, so they seek...
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...enforced. Many people are constantly aware of their health. In majority of public locations, I’ve noticed there are hand sanitizer stations. Throughout the years, technology has evolved and influenced medical needs for the better. We now have more accesses to understand the human body and help patients back to health. Preventative health is a type of health that aims to protect and maintain health. In today’s society, gyms have been popular. More and more people have signed up at gyms. Having a consistent exercise routine will help your health. Health doesn’t have to be diseases, it call also be illnesses such as depression, anxiety, mental illness, or even addictions. It comes in many forms and each is treated through medicalization. In the text, it says that medicalization is, “the process by which some behaviors or conditions that were once seen as personal problems are redefined as medical Hossain 2 issues,” (Ferris & Stein 408). Basically, it means the formal way of defining a medical issue. It gives documentation and legitimacy of medicinal conditions. In my perfect society, I will not allow smoking of any sorts. I believe smoking leads to all things bad. For example, gives you cancer, affect eye sight and pregnancy, prone to heart disease, depression, anxiety, and the smell is just awful! I am anti- smoking. It does not contribute to the human body in a good way. I ban smoking of anything in my society. In the text its states, “Inequalities of race and gender, are often connected...
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...mental health problems are among the most stigmatized, discriminated against, marginalized, disadvantaged and vulnerable members of our society” (Johnstone, 2001). Wrong assumptions and undesirable judgements connected with mental illness may be as damaging as the disease itself. Schizophrenia may cause hallucinations including violence. Depression could cause thought of laziness and substance abuse. Social stigma reduces opportunities available for people with serious mental illnesses (Johnstone, 2001). Medicalization is expected to be a strategy that could be used to reduce blame and stigma, although those who oppose this have said to proceed with caution as attributing mental illness to biogenetic causes may cause unnecessary side effects that could worsen prejudice and rejection (Kvaale, 2013). This essay will review the definitions of mental illness and stigma and the impact that social stigma has on people with these illnesses. It will look at whether increased ‘medicalization’ of mental illness, as thought by the biogenetic explanations, has any impact on public attitudes towards people with such illnesses. Perceptions on mental illness is not always accurate as definitions have mostly been biased over the years. One of the definitions used to describe the mentally ill were “mentally-disordered, mad, or crazy”. Mental illness is a well-known, medically diagnosable illness that causes impairment of one’s cognitive and social abilities. In the middle ages, people with a mental...
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