Lay Concepts Of Illness And Biomedicine

Register to read the introduction… This is closer to the sociological perspectives rather than that of biomedicine, since in lay concepts, people explain their bodies and matters of health and illness in unscientific and inaccurate language, which can be rectified only by awareness, as in community or social awareness of disease conditions. In lay perspective, ideas of illness include more than just the immediate cause of a condition, unlike the ideas in biomedicine. Apart from gauging the severity of the disease and the appropriate treatment, lay conceptualization about the meaning of illness is also important. When people fall ill, they need to find an answer to the "why" of the illness as well as to the "how" of the illness (Trollope-Kumar et al. 2002). Lay concepts of illness are classified according to their origin, mainly to cite, as from within the individual, as from the natural world, as from the social world, as from the supernatural world etc. The origins prioritized differ from country to country, and even culture to culture and community to community. This displays the highly variable and individualized or distinct scope and panorama of lay perspectives of illness, unlike the narrow, clipped clinical aspects of aetiologies and illness in …show more content…
Biomedical Concepts of Illness:
Biomedicine is a vast field that deals with the theoretical aspects of medicine, health and illness (McGuigan, n.d.). The biomedical perspective or concepts of health and illness differs from the sociological and lay ideas in the basic fact that it centers solely on the biological factors concerning a particular issue of illness, while sociological and lay beliefs are intent on various variables than fixed scientific findings and theories. And thus, biomedical concept excludes psychological, environmental and social factors that define illness and healing (Williams, n.d.). Biomedical approaches are more focused on the objective laboratory findings rather than the subjective patient feelings and history. This makes it a materialistic view, as it more or less eludes the psychological and social factors that plays a huge role in the wellness of an individual, meanwhile searching for more apparent biophysical or genetic