Explain Different Sociological Approaches to Health and Ill Health Essay
Throughout society there are many sociological ways to health and ill health. Inside society there are numerous perspectives towards whom the obligation for well being falls upon and also what defines people as ill?
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Your health is usually defined by the general condition of your body and mind. A disease is defined by a great impairment of normal physical or mental function. To help explain the various sociological approaches to health and ill health We are referring to the case study of Aziz and Tamsela.
Aziz and Tamsela have several young children; Tamsela’s elderly parents also live with them inside their three bedroomed houses within a deprived and depressing area of London. Their house is in desperate need of repair; it really is damp and due to this is incredibly expensive to heat in the winter months. Aziz and Tamsela are both at the moment unemployed. The family has very ill health; through the winter the kids generally appear to have regular colds. Moreover Tamsela suffers from asthma and her father has bronchitis; also Tamsela’s mother is depressed and has been prescribed drugs to assist her condition.
One of the first sociological approaches to health insurance and ill health involves the functionalist strategy. The functionalists approach is derived from the work of Talcott Parsons. Using the classic functionalists procedure he referred to how pertaining to society to work effectively that its associates need to healthy and balanced. Parsons defined illness like a form of deviance and that unwell members of society had been still doing a interpersonal role, the sick position.
In his perspective if people declared themselves as unwell specific rights and obligations come with this new role. Functionalists believe that the rights associated with the sick position are; to be exempt from typical social requirements, for example , to attend school, university or function and from meeting regular family commitments, also to become cared for. Parsons saw it as one of the important functions from the family to care for the sick and other dependant family members group.
The also has duties that are mixed up in sick position; taking all reasonable procedure for get better and seeking to job application their typical place in world as soon as possible and cooperate with medical professionals, especially doctors and the staff. Functionalists view that illness offers social implications; the sick cannot operate and should be cared for. They believe that where ever possible health issues must be quickly dealt with to ensure that society to work effectively.
Inside the instance of Aziz and Tamsela, the functionalists watch contradicts their situation because they are in unwell health and are generally not working; therefore they are stopping the successful function of society. To be able to comply with the functionalists perspective they would need to seek support themselves and be sure their return to health in order to be able to begin working and contributing to society such as their current situation they are draining world. Another method to health and sick health could be the Marxists way. Marxists think that the explanations of into the illness as well as the health and social care system provided will be in place to serve the interests in the more powerful dominating classes.
Doctors are seen as agents who have ensure that people go back to are soon as it can be, working in the interests of their employers rather than working in the patient’s best interests. Their work is to ensure that the employer has a healthy labor force. However the govt still enable these companies for making money in the products that effectively cause ill well being such as tobacco and unhealthy food. Factories and firms likewise continue to generate toxic spend and large numbers of pollution that may also cause ill health.
Marxists view levels of ill health to get linked to the variations in social school, for example there is a higher level of condition and reduce life expectancy in areas of poverty, high lack of employment and environmental pollution. Marxists believe that the government do not consider enough the causes for ill health; they believe that rather than treating people each time they become ill the fact that government should look into the factors they are constantly becoming ill. With people the need to be treated by the NHS constantly this kind of costs the federal government lots of money that the Marxist consider is financed by the many advantaged in society.
The truth study of Aziz and Tamsela helps this, as they live in a deprived part of London, in a damp property, they reside in poverty and everything have unwell health, therefore supporting the Marxists watch. Their attention and ill health can be costing society, however in the event they occupied a better area in a better house they may not become ill as frequently and may be able to recover and work. In this instance the action would be to get them to be fit and well unable to return to work and advantage their company however a larger solution might involve seeking a long term difficulty to their health issues. Another method to be considered is a interactionalist or perhaps social action approach.
Interactionism is more interested in the issues of health and illness. They look by; the process which usually lead a person to define themselves as unwell, people with the same complaint differ with symptoms and also differ as to whether they may seek professional help. Also the interaction between professionals and the patient in agreeing just how ill they are and also the conversation between the specialist and the patient about the impact of their disease and how small business illness limitations them. They also consider the effect of illness on persons self-image and their relationships if they happen to be labelled while ill.
Interactionists do not look at the structures and institutions or perhaps the reasons persons become ill but the intricate relationships between people, all their friends and family and the links with the professional companies. They believe that these relationships have as much impact as medical diagnosis on whether a person declares themselves as sick. In relation the Aziz and Tamsela, it is also possible that they announce themselves while ill and declare youngsters as sick as their father and mother both suffer from serious ailments.
Lastly the feminist way focuses on the male domination in society and medical careers and how this kind of affects the and sociable care system. They are especially concerned with the way in which pregnancy and child birth are perceived as medical issues rather than natural method. Another concern they have been looking to combat is definitely the issue which the medical job and the related pharmaceutical sectors have presented low priority to having a male contraceptive pill, giving most birth control method methods only available to females.
Their main focus is the fact that that many females suffer from mental illnesses including anxiety and depression. Feminists see this as a result of their particular exploited position in world and family unit. They argue that since women now also have the pressure and expectation of working nonetheless they also still have the responsibility of running a family, this causes them great stress because of a lot of pressure via society and their families.
Feminists believe that virtually any medical issue should be cured with medicines. In regards to the example this approach does not have a very strong link as Tamsela does not work and neither truly does her hubby. However because of the extra pressure of her parents coping with her she is going to feel more stressed being forced to care for them, she is as well dealing with extra pressure because her partner does not work and no money being released in to the relatives. Health can be defined within a negative or perhaps positive strategy. A positive concept looks at health as a express of total physical, mental, spiritual and social well being.
Whereas an adverse concept of health is that health is merely the absence of disease. In the health insurance and social proper care sector, proper care professionals generally adapt the holistic strategy. The alternative approach tackles the requires of the whole person which include their, mental, spiritual, interpersonal, emotional, mental and physical health.
Mildred Blaxter (1990) interviewed 10, 000 persons in a large scale study. From this she described three requirements of lenders understanding of health and wellness; a positive description, regarding well being as feeling fit and well. A poor definition concerning health to be free from discomfort and also a functional definition, with regards to health regarding being able to execute certain everyday tasks.
Types of Health You can also get two types regarding overall health, the biomedical model and Socio-medical unit. The Biomedical model features dominated traditional western industrialised communities since the nineteenth century. This view of health underpins the plans of the current health program in the UK. With this model health is regarded as the lack of disease and this intervention by health professionals is necessary in the time of illness.
The main purpose of the health service should be to cure disease and to use scientifically examined methods to address diagnosed ailments. In this version little consider is given towards the social and environmental elements that may include caused sick health, this mainly focuses on the individual. The Biomedical version focuses largely on the person and locating a cure for them, it is a limitation of this model as it does not consider the factors causing ill health and also the implications within the rest of contemporary society.
Another limit is that the biomedical model regards health as being simply the lack of disease which in turn does not look at a patients mental, social, religious, emotional, perceptive or physical well being, which could lead to a person becoming harmful in different conditions. However a plus of this is the fact because the primary focus of the model is disease, this may show that it can be the health attention professionals such as doctors to whom are in control of a patient’s condition, that means less misunderstandings or disturbance from others such as supervision or additional health care employees.
This is backlinks in with the inter-actionists sociological approach to health insurance and illness as they focus on the relationship between the registered nurse and the individual and how this kind of affects the person’s health and the decisions made of their health. The biomedical version also rests well with all the functionalists way of health and cultural care. Functionalists view health issues as dysfunctional for society, as if folks are ill they can’t produce their normal contributions to society and are exempt from their usual cultural responsibilities, successfully stopping it from running smoothly.
Then they have the responsibility to co-operate with medical care professionals and should take all reasonable steps to get better. Although the Socio-medical focuses on the social elements that play a role in health and wellbeing. Exploration shows that life span rose and death prices fell especially infant mortality rates with improvements in sanitation plus the provision of clean water, home of new council houses and general better standards of living.
This began throughout the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Though the NHS had not been introduced right up until 1948 which meant totally free personal health care. This goes to demonstrate that cultural and environmental factors are a significant method to obtain disease and that the causes and effects of ill health are certainly not solely surrounding the individual. Even so as the Socio-medical model focuses on the environmental and sociable affecting elements, this can remember to find a source of illness which in turn would mean that until a cure or solution was found each patient would need to treated individual in order that their disease was retained under control.
This might also be seen as strength with the Socio-medical style because though it may take time to locate a solution to the challenge or factors behind an illness, if a solution was found it might mean long-term solutions as well as the prevention from the illness in future. However in contrast to the biomedical model the socio-medical version does not in shape at all with all the functionalists point of view towards into the illness nevertheless fits better with the Marxists view of health and illness, Marxists would explain the shorter life span and the bigger rates of ill-health among the list of poor on account of the inequalities in culture and the poor life instances of those in poverty.
They will argue that the indegent are more likely to provide an inadequate diet and stay in damp properties, in miserable areas where joblessness and environmental pollution happen to be higher making them more vulnerable to illness and that the higher organizations in world such as political figures and the owners of the sectors are not willing to help and help to make changes to support protect poor people from ill-health and disease. Overall the two models of wellness are very several the biomedical model is targeted on curing the each time while the socio-medical model discusses the causes of the illnesses including the society we live in plus the environment and appears for a long run solutions. Successfully both designs are useful and maybe if assembled could be far better in fixing the problems concerning health and disease throughout culture.
