Introduction
Medicalization is a word used to define a procedure where nonmedical issues become treated and determined as a medical condition causing it to be subject to a diagnosis, treatments, preventions or even a medical study. Medical issues change all the time due to new evidence or from changing social attributes and more. Medicalization is a strong influence on the views and beliefs of society. This essay denotes medicalization, discusses a light history of nonmedical problems becoming medical problems due to the views society had on certain behaviours, examines ‘The Sick Role’, and analyses ‘Normalization’ while linking all these points to social control. While medicine in today’s century is for relieving us from pain and restoring …show more content…
If aspects of one don’t seem socially normal anymore, it is most likely that they will be subjected to medicine. Once on medicine, a person is not blamed for their actions anymore, as it is now understood by doctors for their responses to social and political conditions because of the medical diagnosis. Then again, it is a social and political problem that the way of dealing with it is by medicalizing it. Medicalization has predominantly focused on previously nonmedical problems that have been medicalized (Conrad 1992: 210). An example of this is homosexuality and masturbation. In the mid 19th Century, there was a long term and dominant belief that illness was a punishment for sinning and this continued to be believed when sexual behaviour became medicalized and transformed into morbidity to which Religion was an influence on. William Acton advised against masturbation and invented a condition that he called “Spermatorrhoea” (Hart and Wellings 2002). Doctors began to describe that the consequences of “Spermatorrhoea” consisted of physical and mental effects due to masturbation; therefore people would be able to tell if you were sinning by masturbating, as the side effects would be seen on your face. Facial effects would consist of a wrinkled face, big dark rings under the eyes, baldness, and painful skin infections. Doctors taught patients that it led to insanity and other terrible diseases. Guilt and fear were drilled into young people from an early age. Anti-masturbation devices were also made to discourage and control the sexual thoughts and urges of masturbation. The human devices, mostly made for boys, consisted of sharp points directed inwards to jab the penis if he should get an erection during the night, or an electrical system was set in place to deliver electrical shocks. Fourteen devices were made for humans. Today we know that masturbation is a normal and natural thing. In modern
Medicalization is a word used to define a procedure where nonmedical issues become treated and determined as a medical condition causing it to be subject to a diagnosis, treatments, preventions or even a medical study. Medical issues change all the time due to new evidence or from changing social attributes and more. Medicalization is a strong influence on the views and beliefs of society. This essay denotes medicalization, discusses a light history of nonmedical problems becoming medical problems due to the views society had on certain behaviours, examines ‘The Sick Role’, and analyses ‘Normalization’ while linking all these points to social control. While medicine in today’s century is for relieving us from pain and restoring …show more content…
If aspects of one don’t seem socially normal anymore, it is most likely that they will be subjected to medicine. Once on medicine, a person is not blamed for their actions anymore, as it is now understood by doctors for their responses to social and political conditions because of the medical diagnosis. Then again, it is a social and political problem that the way of dealing with it is by medicalizing it. Medicalization has predominantly focused on previously nonmedical problems that have been medicalized (Conrad 1992: 210). An example of this is homosexuality and masturbation. In the mid 19th Century, there was a long term and dominant belief that illness was a punishment for sinning and this continued to be believed when sexual behaviour became medicalized and transformed into morbidity to which Religion was an influence on. William Acton advised against masturbation and invented a condition that he called “Spermatorrhoea” (Hart and Wellings 2002). Doctors began to describe that the consequences of “Spermatorrhoea” consisted of physical and mental effects due to masturbation; therefore people would be able to tell if you were sinning by masturbating, as the side effects would be seen on your face. Facial effects would consist of a wrinkled face, big dark rings under the eyes, baldness, and painful skin infections. Doctors taught patients that it led to insanity and other terrible diseases. Guilt and fear were drilled into young people from an early age. Anti-masturbation devices were also made to discourage and control the sexual thoughts and urges of masturbation. The human devices, mostly made for boys, consisted of sharp points directed inwards to jab the penis if he should get an erection during the night, or an electrical system was set in place to deliver electrical shocks. Fourteen devices were made for humans. Today we know that masturbation is a normal and natural thing. In modern