.png){kind=icon}
Chapter Overview
Medical sociology looks at the social factors that contribute to health inequalities. In the biomedical view of medicine, health is defined as the absence of illness. However, in this textbook, health is synonymous with well-being, having the characteristics of happiness, prosperity, and the satisfaction of human needs. Thus, the definition of health used in the chapter is a state of physical, mental and social well-being. In turn, this represents the biopsychosocial view of health and illness, a way of looking at health as being the intersection of mind, body, and environment. As a way to measure health, epidemiology looks at the causes, distribution, and control of diseases in a population. To measure health, sociologists look at various metrics including life expectancy (the average number of years a person has remaining at a particular age), mortality rate (the number of deaths per 1,000), maternal mortality (the number of deaths of women during childbirth), infant mortality rate (the number of deaths of children under one year of age per 1000 births) and the under-five morality rate.
Various sociological frameworks think about health in different ways. For the structural functionalist, good health is normal and desirable. On the split side, conflict theorists see health and medical services as “goods” that are unevenly distributed between social groups. Symbolic interactionists argue that illness and health vary by population group. Thus, rather than being static notions, they are reflections of a group’s values, needs, and beliefs. Feminist theorists believe that there is inequality in health between men and women. This plays out in a number of ways including the sexualization of the female body, the trivialization of their health problems, and treating women in the medical system like second-class citizens.
Society tends to believe that health is determined by one’s individual choices. The social determinants of health perspective push back on this idea by arguing that there are social, political, and economic aspects that are beyond any individual’s control. The chapter lays out thirteen distinct social determinants of health: income, education, job security, working conditions, early childhood development, food insecurity, housing, social exclusion, social safety net, health services, indigenous status, gender, and race. While the social determinants of health perspective is one way to look at health, a second is the population health perspective. This perspective focuses on both the social determinants of health mentioned above but also preventative strategies and social responses to health problems. The population health perspective advocates for primary prevention, active steps that society can take to prevent health problems. There are four ways to accomplish this: immunization, a well-functioning public health system, wise use of medicines, and an effort to control disease.
A second, but related issue to health, is addiction. This is behaviour that is uncontrollable, repetitious, and possibly harmful. Drugs are substances that cause a biochemical reaction in the body. We use the term drug abuse to refer to drugs that are consumed to an excessive or inappropriate amount resulting in physical or psychological impairments. Continual drug abuse can result in drug dependency, which is when you routinely need the drug for physiological or physical well-being. One of many problems of excessive drug use is tolerance—the drug becomes less effective, so you need to take it in greater and greater quantities. Alcohol and tobacco are two common drugs that people use.