Sociology of Medicine

• Durkheim argues against the dominant view that suicide is primarily due to individual psychopathology, proposing instead that societal conditions play a crucial role.
• Social capital influences public compliance with health measures and supports vulnerable populations during a health crisis.
• Social capital: the behavior of social networks and relationships, characterized by the qualitative presence of trust and reciprocity, enabling society to function effectively.
• Economic and corporate interests have influenced public health decisions, prioritizing economic activity and short-term gains over long-term public health outcomes. This has led to a minimization of stringent public health measures that could have controlled the spread of COVID more effectively.
• Link and Phelan: Underlying social conditions such as socioeconomic status, race, and gender profoundly affect health outcomes across multiple diseases and through various mechanisms.
• Fundamental Causes: Social factors that affect multiple diseases through various mechanisms and persist over time despite changes in disease manifestations or risk factors.
• Link and Phelan: This framework suggests understanding the broader social and economic conditions that lead to exposure to risk factors, thereby designing more effective public health interventions.
• Injuries of Inequality: Conditions and systemic disadvantages imposed on individuals due to their position within hierarchies of race, class, gender, and other societal divisions, which affect their health, opportunities, and stability.
• Intersectionality: This approach is used to analyze how various forms of social stratification, such as race, class, and gender, intersect to affect individuals' experiences and opportunities.
• Fullilove says ethnicity is a more relevant variable for health research compared to what is more commonly used
• Structural Sexism: Describes systematic gender inequalities embedded within societal structures at different levels: macro, meso, and micro.
• Micro level: Interactions between individuals
• Meso level: Organizations and institutions
• Macro level: Political, economic, and cultural
• Reich: mothers’ socioeconomic status influences their ability to make healthcare choices that diverge from medical advice without facing significant consequences.
• Hayasaki: Genetic predispositions vs. environmental impacts: questioning how much of brain development is determined by innate biology versus socio-environmental factors.
• Holmes: Depersonalization of patients by focusing strictly on their physical symptoms rather than their broader social and personal context.
• Medical/Clinical Gaze: Refers to the clinical scrutiny that prioritizes the disease and the body as an object of study, often ignoring the patient's broader life context.
• Cultural Health Capital: Defined as the sum of cultural skills, verbal and nonverbal competencies, attitudes, behaviors, and interactional styles that, when effectively utilized, enhance the interactions within health care settings.
• Medicine and Mistrust on Native American Reservations: debates the federal government's responsibility and effectiveness in fulfilling its promises to provide high-quality healthcare to Native American populations.
• Institutional Racism: A form of racism that is embedded as normal practice within society or an organization, influencing psychiatric diagnosis and treatment often subconsciously.
• Triage: The process of determining the priority of patients' treatments based on the severity of their condition.
• Right to Fail: Deciding when and how much to intervene in the lives of those with severe mental illnesses in adult homes represents a complex ethical challenge.
• There's a significant debate over the right of people with severe mental illnesses to live independently. Advocates argue for the dignity of risk, the right to live independently and potentially fail, while critics worry about the safety and practicality of such transitions without adequate support.
• According to Conrad illness is social and cultural perceptions
• Social Construction of Illness: The idea that illness is not solely a biologically determined condition but is also shaped by cultural and social systems.
• Social Constructionism: A theoretical framework that asserts that much of what we perceive as reality is shaped by social interactions and cultural contexts.
• Watters: How local understandings of mental health are influenced or replaced by Western norms.
• Watters: Questioning whether the spread of disorders like anorexia in non-Western countries is due to Western influence (culturally specific)or if similar conditions existed but were understood differently (universal).
• Watters: Concerns about the implications of imposing Western standards on other cultures, potentially overlooking local understandings and treatments.
• Watters: Viewing mental health through

  • a cultural lens
  • a psychological lens
  • cultural imperialism
  • a form of globalization
• Is Being Fat Bad for You: Studies fail to account for variables or other health determinants. They express concern over how these simplifications can mislead public understanding and policy.
• Moral Economy: Focuses on the politics of social values and interpersonal strategies used by individuals to navigate the stigma and challenges posed by their economic conditions.
• Eyal: Social, political, and institutional changes influence diagnostic practices.
• Looping Effects: Describes how the categorization of autism influences how individuals are treated and perceive themselves, which in turn affects the social understanding of autism.
• Institutional Matrix: The network of policies, institutional settings, and professional practices that define how a particular health condition is treated and managed within a society.
• Biopolitics: Utilizing biological knowledge to govern populations
• Schüll: wearable technology is shaping and controlling individual behaviors and choices through continuous data collection and feedback.
• Zhang: Societal inclusion principles vs. private decisions
• Velvet eugenics involves individual choice rather than state enforcement, leading to a high rate of terminated pregnancies for fetuses with Down syndrome in societies that otherwise promote inclusivity and diversity.