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Medicalization and pharmaceuticalization at the intersections: Looking backward, sideways and forward
1Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bowdoin College, 7000 College Station, Brunswick, ME 04011-8470, United States. sbell@bowdoin.edu
Social Science & Medicine (1982)
|May 29, 2012
Summary
This review examines pharmaceuticalization and its impact on public health, proposing a new framework to understand these evolving medicalization processes in the 21st century.
Area of Science:
- Sociology of Health and Medicine
- Public Health Policy
- Science and Technology Studies
Background:
- Medicalization studies have evolved significantly, with increased focus on pharmaceuticals and industry influence.
- Existing frameworks struggle to explain complex interactions between modern and postmodern elements in healthcare.
Purpose of the Study:
- To explore the relationship between medicalization, pharmaceuticalization, and the pharmaceuticalization of public health.
- To critique the limitations of modernist thinking in current medicalization studies.
- To propose a reconceptualized framework for studying 21st-century health processes.
Main Methods:
- Literature review and conceptual analysis.
- Examination of modernist and postmodernist perspectives.
- Development of a new theoretical framework.
Main Results:
- Modernist thinking inadequately explains contemporary medicalization dynamics.
- Pharmaceuticalization and pharmaceuticalization of public health represent distinct but related phenomena.
- A novel framework is needed to capture the complexity of these processes.
Conclusions:
- Reconceptualizing medicalization requires moving beyond modernist limitations.
- The proposed framework offers a more robust approach to studying pharmaceutical influence on health.
- This work provides tools for empirical research on 21st-century health trends.
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