Medicalization Research Articles

Review of Kirsty Martin’s “Modernism and the Medicalization of Sunlight: D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and the Sun Cure

Review of Kirsty Martin’s “Modernism and the Medicalization of Sunlight: D.H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield and the Sun Cure

Prosthetic Configurations and Imagination: Dis/ability, Body, and Technology

Prosthesis has been a useful medium for thinking about the identity of people with disabilities, who often rely on artificial devices in their daily lives. Recent advances in technology have altered the biological body via so-called enhancement technologies, which can augment bodily forms and functions to improve human characteristics. Given its corrective abilities, prosthesis has become the ＂interconstitutive＂ point which links body and machine, blurring the borderline between normal and abnormal, abled and disabled, human and cyborg. People with disabilities are no longer the only ones using prostheses to fix their bodily deficiencies; non-disabled people need them even more to modify their ＂imperfect＂ bodies. Being human, as Lennard Davis points out, has become ＂an aspect of supplementarity＂ (69). The essay will take a biocultural approach to the study of the scientificized and medicalized body to construct a dialectical discourse between ableism and dis/ability, the natural body and the artificial hybrid, humanity and technology, and related issues. Concurrently critiquing, historicizing, and theorizing prosthetics, the essay lays out a balanced and complex picture of the merging of flesh, machine, and subject, and, by doing so, offers a reconceptualization of dis/ability and post/humanity in a futurist society from the perspectives of materiality, metaphoricity, and reflexivity of prosthetics.

Public Autonomy and Self-Care Approach in Iran

Background and Aim: Research in the field of self-care is perhaps one of the keys of the transition from health management crisis and its pathology can predict the occurrence of many health-related crises. Thus, this study examines the impact of social determinants on the public tendency towards different styles of self-care and formation of defensive self-care. Materials and Methods: In this analytical study, after purposeful search and review of the texts, and examination of interaction between the therapist and the community and its overall impact on the structure of the health system, a self-care style is argued as defensive self-care. Findings: In this study, defensive self-care was argued with Quadruple affections of politico-social, fundamental, belief and economic. Analysis of the interaction between the therapists and the community and its overall impact on the structure of the health system from the perspective of medical history at any period of time, through the mediating role of defensive mechanisms and its impact on public perception and autonomy, reveal a self-care style as defensive self-care. Which reflects the return of human to the traditional medicine, participation in self-care and efforts to revive and develop it in his life. The tendency to public participation in their health, the specialization of public health services and medicalization are considered as the sources of defensive self-care. Conclusion: In the line of ethical goals of promoting public health and reducing inequalities in health outcomes, it is necessary to pay attention and recognition of the public tendency and autonomy. Please cite this article as: Mahlooji K, Akrami F. Public Autonomy and Self-Care Approach in Iran. Bioethics Journal 2018; 8(30): 45-54.

Field Perspective Palliative Care: Taking the Long View

Our medicalised modern cultures render reason and mystery mutually exclusive, define death by disease as failure, and dying as disgraceful. Providers and policymakers alike marginalise ageing and dying individuals, formulating largely ineffective strategies without palliative care and pain relief budgets. The aim of palliative care is to support the person with incurable illness to live their remaining life as well and as meaningfully as possible and to support them as they eventually die from their illness and reaching the natural end of their lives It acknowledges that each life is morally significant, restoring patients’ and families’ quality of life where possible, and attending meticulously to the dying period as necessary. Hospices are far more than mere buildings; they house an ethos of care. The field is currently challenged by its variable situation over the world and the pressing need to incorporate new technology to its practice. This article provides a review of some important milestones in the history and development of Palliative Care and evolution of Palliative Medicine in some countries, some current issues concerning consistency in its implementation, and some likely prospects for its future advance and expected expansion, from the perspective of one central question: “What constitutes the ethos of Palliative Care replicating its foundational philosophy and principles?” which helps to set the scene for possible future advances to integrate ethical, legal and social implications. Technology will help expansion by facilitating communication and acurately predicting needs.

Bioethics as a counterbalance to medicalization

Bioethics as a counterbalance to medicalization

Value-based counselling: Reflections on fourteen years of psychosocial support in Afghanistan

The psychosocial and mental health support system in Afghanistan has evolved significantly over the last decades. Inge Missmahl, founder and director of the International Psychosocial Organisation gGmbH traces the history of the sector over the last fourteen years and reflects on working towards the long-term integration of biopsychosocial mental health care in the Afghan Public Health System. Health system integration was accomplished through development and training delivery of a value-based counselling approach. The approach is based on six fundamental principles which consider the sociocultural origins and context of the individual’s symptomatology, emphasises personal empowerment over pathologisation and promotes a symmetrical relationship between counsellor and client. Over 300 Afghanis were trained in this approach and qualified as psychosocial counselors and counselled over 10,000 clients in total. The work to date highlights the importance of designing long-term, applied training programmes which include self experience and qualitative supervision in psychosocial support provision.

Examining help-seeking patterns within modern and traditional resources for support in Afghanistan

Little is known about who and what Afghans turn to cope with mental distress precipitated by ongoing socio-political and economic problems. In a cross-sectional survey, the authors examined help-seeking behaviour for mental distress in 306 Afghans residing in Kabul, Afghanistan, and how their choice of what to access for help is influenced by various social and mental health-related factors. Factors predicting the use of six distinct resources for support were examined, including biomedical and behavioural health and community-based resources. Results indicated that Afghans mostly draw on their faith, followed by social support, to cope with mental distress. Higher distress symptoms had a moderate, but statistically significant influence, on seeking help across all resources, whereas demographic factors only predicted encounters with primary care physicians. Female gender predicted social support seeking, and income increased the likelihood of encounters with herbalists. Meeting the psychosocial needs of Afghans through promoting a more integrated mental healthcare system is discussed. Key implications for practice Help-seeking for mental distress among Afghans in Kabul is highly pluralistic Although religious activities were the most widely used coping resource, those seeking care outside, from biomedical practitioners and traditional healers were, on average, more distressed. An integrated mental health system that embraces both modern and traditional healing practices may be more efficacious than medicalised mental health systems in meeting the unmet psychosocial needs of Afghans.

The bioethics and medicalization

The bioethics and medicalization

The Medicalisation of Menstruation: Its Scope and Limits

The Medicalisation of Menstruation: Its Scope and Limits

From Menstruation to Menopause: Have We Medicalised the Physiology of Normalcy? (Part 1)

From Menstruation to Menopause: Have We Medicalised the Physiology of Normalcy? (Part 1)

It is not mine. Surrogacy between Natural Body and Artificial Body

Drawing on Jean Baudrillard’s approach and his process of simulation, which is a useful key for interpreting and analysing the natural body-artificial body dichotomy, this article aims to raise questions about the repercussions that the new culture of the body and the practices associated with the medicalization of maternity have on the construction of personal and social identity. The debate encompasses issues in the realm of bioethics, the presence or absence of human rights, contractual exchange, the processes of commodification of the body, women and pregnancy, and processes that manipulate human life. The scope of the observations thus extends to subjects such as bioethics, body ownership and the manipulation of life, to the point of questioning the construction of gender identity and even the very concept of mother. The objective of this study is to render the complexity of the issue of surrogacy and highlight the resulting theoretical challenges faced by the social sciences. It is still essentially exploratory in nature and is intended as a starting point for the development of this research topic, raising certain questions in an attempt to provide the sociological debate with new theoretical and empirical challenges.

Male sexuality, medicalization and public health in brazil

Male sexuality, medicalization and public health in brazil

What If?: A Story of an Unwanted Medicalized Birth.

What If?: A Story of an Unwanted Medicalized Birth.

Adolescent and expressions of school discontent: cases study

O artigo visa a apresentar parte de um estudo de casos de dois adolescentes encaminhados pela escola ao serviço de psiquiatria. A pesquisa realiza interface entre os campos da Psicanálise e da Educação. A partir da metodologia de pesquisa-intervenção, o material recolhido nos anos de 2013 e 2014 foi agrupado para análise, sendo elencadas categorias e subcategorias temáticas extraídas das falas dos próprios adolescentes. Conclui-se que os impasses na área da escolarização são constituídos por múltiplos fatores, que não apenas os de ordem individual, o que se contrapõe à lógica contemporânea da medicalização dos problemas escolares

The right to medicalization? Invited commentary on Karsoho et al. (2016)

The right to medicalization? Invited commentary on Karsoho et al. (2016)

Medykalizacja śmierci a prawa i godność dziecka u kresu życia

ENWEndNote BIBJabRef, Mendeley RISPapers, Reference Manager, RefWorks, Zotero AMA Kruszecka-Krówka A, Cepuch G. The medicalization of the death vs. the children’s rights and dignity at the end of the life. Psychoonkologia. 2016;20(4):197-202. doi:10.5114/pson.2016.66292. APA Kruszecka-Krówka, A., & Cepuch, G. (2016). The medicalization of the death vs. the children’s rights and dignity at the end of the life. Psychoonkologia, 20(4), 197-202. https://doi.org/10.5114/pson.2016.66292 Chicago Kruszecka-Krówka, Agnieszka, and Grażyna Cepuch. 2016. "The medicalization of the death vs. the children’s rights and dignity at the end of the life". Psychoonkologia 20 (4): 197-202. doi:10.5114/pson.2016.66292. Harvard Kruszecka-Krówka, A., and Cepuch, G. (2016). The medicalization of the death vs. the children’s rights and dignity at the end of the life. Psychoonkologia, 20(4), pp.197-202. https://doi.org/10.5114/pson.2016.66292 MLA Kruszecka-Krówka, Agnieszka et al. "The medicalization of the death vs. the children’s rights and dignity at the end of the life." Psychoonkologia, vol. 20, no. 4, 2016, pp. 197-202. doi:10.5114/pson.2016.66292. Vancouver Kruszecka-Krówka A, Cepuch G. The medicalization of the death vs. the children’s rights and dignity at the end of the life. Psychoonkologia. 2016;20(4):197-202. doi:10.5114/pson.2016.66292.

Modernism and the Medicalization of Sunlight: D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and the Sun Cure

Modernism and the Medicalization of Sunlight: D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, and the Sun Cure

Medicalisation in the UK: changing dynamics, but still ongoing.

Medicalisation in the UK: changing dynamics, but still ongoing.

Two concerns about the medicalization of love.

Two concerns about the medicalization of love.

Treating ADHD in Preschool Children: The Medicalization of Early Childhood?

The 2011 evidence-based guideline from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) on the treatment of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)