Explain the symbolic interactionist perspective on the social construction of illness

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

In studying health, symbolic interactionists focus on the meanings that social actors giv

their illness or disease and how these affect people's self-concept and relationships

with others. We socially construct "health" and "illness" and how both should be

treated. For example, some people explain disease by blaming it on those who are ill. If

we attribute cancer to the acts of a person, we can assume that we will be immune to

that disease if we do not engage in the same behavior. For example, nonsmokers who

learn that a lung cancer victim had a two-pack-a-day habit feel comforted that they are

unlikely to suffer the same fate. Although biological characteristics provide objective

criteria for determining medical conditions such as heart disease, tuberculosis, or

cancer, there is also a subjective component to how illness is defined. This subjective

component is very important when we look at conditions such as childhood

hyperactivity, mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse, cigarette smoking, and overeating,

all of which have been medicalized. The term medicalization refers to the process

whereby nonmedical problems become defined and treated as illnesses or disorders.

Medicalization may occur on three levels: (1) the conceptual level (the use of medical

terminology to define the problem)? (2) the institutional level (physicians are supervisors

of treatment and gatekeepers to applying for benefits)? and (3) the interactional level

(when physicians treat patients' conditions as medical problems). Labeling habitual

gambling as a disease is an example of the medicalization of deviance. It gives

physicians and other medical professionals greater authority to determine what should

be considered "normal" and "acceptable" behavior and to establish the appropriate

mechanisms for controlling "deviant behaviors.". Medicalization is a two-way process:

just as conditions can be medicalized, so can they be demedicalized. Demedicalization

refers to the process whereby a problem ceases to be defined as an illness or a

disorder. Examples include the removal of certain behaviors (such as homosexuality)

from the list of mental disorders compiled by the American Psychiatric Association and

the deinstitutionalization of mental health patients.