Medical Sociology

Medical sociology studies health, illness, and health care as social phenomena — the social patterning of disease, the experience of illness, and the organization of medicine.

Scope

It covers the social determinants of health, the sick role and illness experience, the medical profession and medicalization, and health-care systems and inequalities.

Core questions

• How is health socially patterned?
• How is illness experienced and managed socially?
• How is the medical profession organized and powerful?
• What is medicalization?
• How do health-care systems produce inequalities?

Key concepts

• Social determinants of health
• Sick role
• Illness experience
• Medicalization
• Professional dominance
• Health inequalities

Key theories

The sick role

Parsons analysed illness as a social role with rights and obligations, integrating medicine into the social system.

Professional dominance

Freidson analysed medicine as a profession exercising autonomy and social control, introducing medicalization concerns.

History

From Parsons's sick role (1951) and Freidson's analysis of the medical profession (1970), medical sociology grew to encompass the social determinants of health, the lived experience of chronic illness, medicalization, and comparative health systems.

Debates

Is medicalization beneficial or controlling?

Whether defining problems as medical extends care or expands social control over everyday life.

Key figures

• Talcott Parsons
• Eliot Freidson

Seminal works

• parsons-1951
• freidson-1970

Frequently asked questions

What is medicalization?

The process by which non-medical problems come to be defined and treated as medical conditions.