Editing Medicalization (section)

==History==
The concept of medicalization was devised by sociologists to explain how medical knowledge is applied to behaviors which are not self-evidently medical or biological.<ref name=White>{{cite book|last=White|first=Kevin|title=An introduction to the sociology of health and illness|year=2002|publisher=SAGE|isbn=0-7619-6400-2|pages=42|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=5bHxQBNWGHMC&pg=PA42}}</ref> The term ''medicalization'' entered the sociology literature in the 1970s in the works of [[Irving Zola]], [[Peter Conrad (sociologist)|Peter Conrad]] and [[Thomas Szasz]], among others. According to [[Eric Cassell]]'s book, ''The Nature of Suffering and the Goals of Medicine'' (2004), the expansion of medical social control is being justified as a means of explaining deviance.<ref>{{Cite book|title=The nature of suffering and the goals of medicine|author=Cassell, Eric J. |author-link=Eric Cassell |date=2004|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=9780195156164|edition=2nd|location=New York|oclc=173843216}}</ref> These sociologists viewed medicalization as a form of social control in which medical authority expanded into domains of everyday existence, and they rejected medicalization in the name of liberation. This critique was embodied in works such as Conrad's article "The discovery of hyperkinesis: notes on medicalization of deviance", published in 1973 ([[Hyperkinetic disorder|hyperkinesis]] was the term then used to describe what we might now call [[ADHD]]).<ref>{{cite journal |author=Conrad P |author-link=Peter Conrad (sociologist) |title=The discovery of hyperkinesis: notes on the medicalization of deviant behavior |journal=Soc Probl |volume=23 |issue=1 |pages=12&ndash;21 |date=October 1975 |pmid=11662312 |doi= 10.2307/799624|jstor=799624 }}</ref>

These sociologists did not believe medicalization to be a new phenomenon, arguing that medical authorities had always been concerned with social behavior and traditionally functioned as agents of social control (Foucault, 1965; Szasz,1970; Rosen). However, these authors took the view that increasingly sophisticated technology had extended the potential reach of medicalization as a form of social control, especially in terms of "psychotechnology" (Chorover,1973).

In the 1975 book ''Limits to medicine: Medical nemesis'' (1975), [[Ivan Illich]] put forth one of the earliest uses of the term "medicalization". Illich, a philosopher, argued that the medical profession harms people through [[iatrogenesis]], a process in which illness and social problems increase due to medical intervention. Illich saw iatrogenesis occurring on three levels: the ''clinical'', involving serious [[side effects]] worse than the original condition; the ''social'', whereby the general public is made docile and reliant on the medical profession to cope with life in their society; and the ''structural'', whereby the idea of aging and dying as medical illnesses effectively "medicalized" human life and left individuals and societies less able to deal with these "natural" processes.

The concept of medicalization dovetailed with some aspects of the 1970s [[feminist]] movement. Critics such as [[Barbara Ehrenreich|Ehrenreich]] and English (1978) argued that women's bodies were being medicalized by the predominantly male medical profession. Menstruation and pregnancy had come to be seen as medical problems requiring interventions such as [[hysterectomies]].

[[Marxist]]s such as Vicente Navarro (1980) linked medicalization to an oppressive [[capitalist]] society. They argued that medicine disguised the underlying causes of disease, such as [[social inequality]] and poverty, and instead presented health as an individual issue. Others<ref>{{Cite book|title = Culture, Health and Illness|last = Helman|first = Cecil|publisher = Arnold|year = 2007|isbn = 9780340914502|location = London|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=C3BoQgAACAAJ}}</ref> examined the power and prestige of the medical profession, including the use of terminology to mystify and of professional rules to exclude or subordinate others.

Tiago Correia (2017)<ref>{{cite journal |last=Correia |first=Tiago |year=2017 |title=Revisiting Medicalization: A Critique of the Assumptions of What Counts As Medical Knowledge |journal=Front. Sociol. |volume=2 |issue=14 |doi=10.3389/fsoc.2017.00014 |url=https://repositorio.iscte-iul.pt/bitstream/10071/14414/5/fsoc-02-00014.pdf |doi-access=free }}</ref> offers an alternative perspective on medicalization. He argues that medicalization needs to be detached from biomedicine to overcome much of the criticism it has faced, and to protect its value in contemporary sociological debates. Building on [[Hans-Georg Gadamer|Gadamer]]'s hermeneutical view of medicine, he focuses on medicine's common traits, regardless of empirical differences in both time and space. Medicalization and social control are viewed as distinct analytical dimensions that in practice may or may not overlap. Correia contends that the idea of "making things medical" needs to include all forms of medical knowledge in a global society, not simply those forms linked to the established (bio)medical professions. Looking at "knowledge", beyond the confines of professional boundaries, may help us understand the multiplicity of ways in which medicalization can exist in different times and societies, and allow contemporary societies to avoid such pitfalls as "demedicalization" (through a turn towards [[complementary and alternative medicine]]) on the one hand, or the over-rapid and unregulated adoption of biomedical medicine in non-western societies on the other. The challenge is to determine what medical knowledge is present, and how it is being used to medicalize behaviors and symptoms.