Many critics of medicalization express concern that the process privileges individualised, biologically grounded interpretations of medicalized phenomena, inhibiting understanding and communication of aspects of those phenomena that are less relevant to their biomedical modelling. I suggest that this line of critique views medicalization as a hermeneutical injustice—a form of epistemic injustice that prevents people having the hermeneutical resources available to interpret and communicate significant areas of their experience. Interpreting the critiques in this fashion shows they frequently fail because (...) they: neglect the ways in which medicalization may not obscure, but rather illuminate, individuals’ experiences; and neglect the testimony of those experiencing first-hand medicalized problems, thus may be guilty of perpetrating testimonial injustice. However, I suggest that such arguments are valuable insofar as they highlight the unwarranted epistemic privilege frequently afforded to medical institutions and medicalized models of phenomena, and a consequent need for greater epistemic humility on the part of health workers and researchers. (shrink)

This code of practice for health professionals was prepared by a multi-professional group and reflects good clinical practice in encouraging dialogue about individuals' wishes concerning their future treatment. It has a broad practical approach, considers a range of advance statements, advises of dangers and benefits of making treatment decisions in advance and combines annotated code of practice with a quick pull out guide for easy reference.

We write in response to the original article by Rennie and Rudland published in the April 2003 edition of this journal.1 Current and former Dundee Medical School students are concerned at the media misinterpretation of the study and the consequences that this branding of “dishonesty” will have on Dundee Medical School’s reputation and also on individuals embarking on their ….

Is medicalization always harmful? When does medicine overstep its proper boundaries? The aim of this article is to outline the pragmatic criteria for distinguishing between medicalization and over-medicalization. The consequences of considering a phenomenon to be a medical problem may take radically different forms depending on whether the problem in question is correctly or incorrectly perceived as a medical issue. Neither indiscriminate acceptance of medicalization of subsequent areas of human existence, nor criticizing new medicalization cases (...) just because they are medicalization can be justified. The article: (i) identifies various consequences of both well-founded medicalization and over-medicalization; (ii) demonstrates that the issue of defining appropriate limits of medicine cannot be solved by creating an optimum model of health; (iii) proposes four guiding questions to help distinguish medicalization from over-medicalization. The article should foster a normative analysis of the phenomenon of medicalization and contribute to the bioethical reflection on the boundaries of medicine. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:One recent body of work has concerned medicalization and how it can create epistemic injustice. It focuses on medicalization as a hermeneutical process that shapes the conceptual framework(s) we use to refer to some conditions/experiences. In parallel, some scholars with lived experience of madness have started to explore the epistemic harms suffered by the Mad community. Building on this, I argue that the process of medicalization in psychiatry affects the Mad community in a specific way that has (...) been overlooked in the literature on medicalization and epistemic injustice. That is, medicalization can create what is called "contributory injustice." This form of injustice occurs when marginalized communities have been able to create alternative hermeneutical resources, but these resources are dismissed or discredited by the dominant group. I argue that the emerging field of Mad Studies is a victim of this type of injustice when Mad experiences are unilaterally medicalized. (shrink)

Preventive medicine is sometimes criticised as it contributes to medicalization of normal life. The concept ‘medicalization’ has been introduced by Zola to refer to processes in which the labels ‘healthy’ and ‘ill’ are made relevant for more and more aspects of human life. If preventive medicine contributes to medicalization, would that be morally problematic? My thesis is that such a contribution is indeed morally problematic. The concept is sometimes used to express moral intuitions regarding the practice of (...) prevention and health promotion. Through analysis of these intuitions as well as some other moral concerns, I give an explication of the moral problems of medicalization within the context of preventive medicine. (shrink)

Physician assisted suicide or active euthanasia is analyzed as a medicalization of the needs of persons who are suffering interminably. As with other medicalized responses to personal needs, the availability of active euthanasia will likely divert attention and resources from difficult social and personal aspects of the needs of dying and suffering persons, continuing the pattern of privatization of the costs of caregiving for persons who are candidates for active euthanasia, limiting the ability of caregivers to assist suffering persons (...) to make their continued suffering tolerable, and casting doubt on the voluntariness of the choice of active euthanasia. Keywords: caregivers, euthanasia, family, medicalization, voluntariness CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

Youth antisocial behaviour is frequently considered to be displayed by children and adolescents who suffer from behavioural disorders. Consequently, attempts to reduce ASB have increasingly comprised mental health interventions. Moreover, early signalling of children at risk and early prevention of behavioural problems are regarded as crucial remedies. Critical investigations of these developments, however, are in particular concerned with the consequent medicalization of society and the behaviour exhibited by infants, children and adolescents. Consequently, the new Dutch youth law even refers (...) to demedicalization as a central aim. From an ethical point of view, this article critically discusses the meaning and relevance of the medicalization reproach in the context of ASB. The aim is to show that the term medicalization can reasonably be attached to three different developments: the biomedical turn, an increase in youth mental health care and early signalling and prevention. The ethical implications of these developments, however, are diverse, referring to both risks and benefits. By itself, neither the term medicalization nor demedicalization carries a self-evident normative meaning. Therefore, a careful ethical analysis is needed to reveal which social developments are actually recommendable or disadvantageous. (shrink)

Two contributions from Dr Ivan Illich follow. The first, in which he sets out his primary thesis of the medicalization of life, is a section from Dr Illich's book `Medical Nemesis'. (It is reprinted with the permission of the author and his publishers, Messrs Calder and Boyars.) The second is a transcript of the paper which Dr Illich read at the conference organized by the London Medical Group on iatrogenic disease. Both are ultimately addressed to the recipients of medical (...) care, the general public, although the second paper is specifically addressed to young doctors and medical students. For Dr Illich the world is suffering from too much medical interference, and a medical edifice has been built which is one of the threats to the real life of human beings - a threat which so far has been disguised as care. (shrink)

Today, phallocentrism is perpetuated by a flourishing medical construction that focuses exclusively on penile erections as the essence of men's sexual function and satisfaction. This article describes how this medicalization is promoted by urologists, medical industries, mass media, and various entrepreneurs. Many men and women provide a ready audience for this construction because of masculine ideology and gender socialization. While there may be some advantages to this construction, there are major disadvantages to men in terms of the inevitable failure (...) of the promised perfectible erection and the perpetuation of a falsely universalized and biologized vision of sexual experience. Any sexual interests of women in other than phallocentric sexual scripting are denied. (shrink)

New and proposed medical technologies continually challenge our vision of what constitutes appropriate medical treatment. As scholars and consumers grapple with the meaning of innovation, one common critical theme to surface is that it constitutes undesirable medicalization. But we are embodied creatures who can often benefit from medical knowledge; in addition, rejection of medicalization may be in some cases based on an untenable appeal to nature. Harnessing the power of medicine for women’s welfare requires us to rethink the (...) goals of medicine as well as implement fundamental reforms. (shrink)

This article comments on a collection of remarkable narratives authored by fat writers addressing the American Medical Association’s decision to label obesity a disease. Endeavoring to avoid what has been termed “thinsplaining,” the commentary examines the voices of the writers in the hopes of identifying key themes and points that emerge from these fat narratives. The commentary canvasses the writers’ perspectives on topics such as the medicalization and pathologization of fat, the Western and especially American tendency to emphasize individual (...) culpability for fatness, and, of course, the horrific commonality and intensity of fat stigma. Stigma is a particular focus for the commentary, both because it is a principal theme in the collection, and also because it is important to understand precisely what stigma is and its deep connections to larger macrosocial structures. The commentary concludes with a simple admonition, gleaned from the narratives: we should strive to do better. (shrink)

The process of medicalization has been analyzed in the medical humanities with disapprobation, with much emphasis placed on its ability to reinforce existing social power structures to ill effect. While true, this is an incomplete picture of medicalization. I argue that medicalization can both reinforce and disrupt existing social hierarchies within the clinic and outside of it, to ill or good effect. We must attend to how this takes place locally and globally lest we misunderstand how (...) class='Hi'>medicalization mediates power and justice. I provide concrete examples of how this occurs by considering dysesthesia ethiopsis, autism, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, and HIV/AIDS. (shrink)

Scholars are beginning to use the concept medicalization of poverty to theorize how the United States spends large amounts of money on illnesses related to poverty but invests much less in preventing these illnesses and the conditions that create them. This study examines the connection between poverty, disease burden and health-related costs through the in-depth interviews of 86 Black mothers living in neighborhoods with high levels of violence on the South Side of Chicago. The rippling costs of poverty and (...) violence include 56 percent of the mothers reporting post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms and 48 percent reporting mild to severe depressive symptoms. Mothers also report poor housing quality such as “toxic mold.” The physical costs include reports of back pains, stomach aches, hair falling out, panic attacks, hands shaking, insomnia, fainting from exhaustion and lack of sexual desire, and children with asthma and osteomyelitis reportedly from the exposure to mold. Transformative solutions are explored that build upon the cultural resources of Black mothers and engage policy levers. (shrink)

This article offers a critique and reconstruction of the concept of medicalization. Most researchers describe medicalization as the redefinition of social problems as medical concerns, and track its spread by the proliferation of disease language and diagnostic categories. Forensic psychiatry and disorders like psychopathy are often cited in these debates. I argue that focusing on discourse overlooks how medical language can justify or mask non-medical practices and outcomes, and lead researchers to identify medicalization where it has not (...) occurred. Building on other critiques of medicalization and recent studies of medical and legal expertise, I propose an alternative conception based on conditions for the performance of medical practice and other forms of expert labor. I distinguish the participation or intervention of medical practitioners from the medicalization of expert practice and identify several institutional factors that facilitate the latter. I illustrate this approach using a critical historical case: the first adult penal psychiatric clinic in the United States, founded by the eminent psychopathologist Bernard Glueck at New York’s Sing Sing Prison in 1916. Glueck’s extensive writings reveal little evidence of medicalization: psychopaths were largely defined and diagnosed according to penal rather than medical criteria, and they received additional punishment rather than treatment. A review of recent research confirms that psychopathy remains primarily a penal rather than medical condition. I conclude that focusing studies of medicalization on practice rather than discourse clarifies the concept and avoids reifying the notion of a medicalized society. (shrink)

This article introduces the concept of economic medicalization where non-medical problems are transformed into medical problems in order to achieve the objective of corporate shareholder wealth maximization. Following an overview of the differences in ethical norms applicable to medical ethics and business ethics, the economic medicalization of medical research practice and publication is examined in some detail. This motivates a general discussion of the problems involved in the ethical approval process for medical research that balances the interests of (...) both business and government in the market for medical products and services. (shrink)

Is the medicalization of poverty a rational and humane response to an intractable problem, or just the latest in a long series of ineffective and costly attempts to address the problem? Considerable ink has been spilled on the dispute, with each side marshalling heart-rending anecdotes to help make their case — along with the obligatory statistics and regression analyses. Rather than add more verbiage to that dispute, this article sketches out a framework for understanding the phenomenon of medicalization, (...) along with a description of the demand-side and supply-side factors that have brought us to this pass. (shrink)

This article provides a broad survey of issues facing rural communities and suggests that medicalization of poverty concepts and interventions need to be tailored to those populations. Rural poverty may be both broader and deeper than in urban areas. Those challenges seem to produce a constellation of health conditions, as rural residents struggle with unemployment and lack of opportunities. Relatedly, rural communities struggle to maintain financially viable hospitals and specialty providers. The article closes by offering a snapshot of rural-specific (...) strategies to address these issues. (shrink)

Medicalization appears to be an issue that is both ubiquitous and unquestionably problematic as it seems to signal at once a social and existential threat. This perception of medicalization, however, is nothing new. Since the first main writings in the 1960s and 1970s, it has consistently been used to describe inappropriate or abusive instances of medical authority. Yet, while this standard approach claims that medicalization is a growing problem, it assumes that there is simply one “medical model” (...) and that the expanding realm of “the medical” can be more or less clearly delineated. Moreover, while intended to establish the reality of this growing threat, this research often requires making arbitrary or unjustified distinctions between different practices. To better clarify the concept of medicalization, I will focus more on capturing the variety of medical practices than on the sociological aspects of medical discourse. In doing so, I will explore the distinction between medicalization and pathologization, a distinction that is often overlooked and that brings with it many conceptual and practical implications. After defining these terms, I will use some examples to show that while pathologizing is closely tied to medicalizing, both can occur independently. I will then further develop this distinction in terms of the different individual and social effects of these practices. (shrink)

Summary Principles Timely support for patients and people close to them, and effective, sensitive communication are essential. Decisions must be based on the individual patient's circumstances and reviewed regularly. Sensitive advance discussion should always be encouraged, but not forced. Information about CPR and the chances of a successful outcome needs to be realistic. Practical matters Information about CPR policies should be displayed for patients and staff. Leaflets should be available for patients and people close to them explaining about CPR, how (...) decisions are made and their involvement in decisions. Decisions about attempting CPR must be communicated effectively to relevant health professionals. In emergencies If no advance decision has been made or is known, CPR should be attempted unless: the patient has refused CPR; the patient is clearly in the terminal phase of illness; or the burdens of the treatment outweigh the benefits. Advance decision making Competent patients should be involved in discussions about attempting CPR unless they indicate that they do not want to be. Where patients lack competence to participate, people close to them can be helpful in reflecting their views. Legal issues Patients' rights under the Human Rights Act must be taken into account in decision making. Neither patients nor relatives can demand treatment which the health care team judges to be inappropriate, but all efforts will be made to accommodate wishes and preferences. In England, Wales and Northern Ireland relatives and people close to the patient are not entitled in law to take health care decisions for the patient. In Scotland, adults may appoint a health care proxy to give consent to medical treatment. Health professionals need to be aware of the law in relation to decision making for children and young people.IntroductionWhy policies are neededCardiopulmonary resuscitation can be attempted on any person whose cardiac or respiratory functions cease. Failure of these functions is part of dying and thus …. (shrink)

This article reflects on the intersection of the New Testament’s witness with current questions of illness, medication, risk, luck, death, and hope. Drawing principally on the Gospel of Matthew and the letters of Paul, I argue that, for Christians, hope in the resurrection—not the ability to avoid suffering and death—provides the best context for prudential judgment in light of the inscrutability of the future and the concomitant opacity that attends medical decision-making. We do not and will not know what we (...) would need to know in order to make decisions we can count on with surety, and we thus read Scripture in order to become the people who can make wise judgments in the meantime called hope. (shrink)

The ongoing ‘enhancement’ debate pits critics of new self-shaping technologies against enthusiasts. One important thread of that debate concerns medicalization, the process whereby ‘non-medical’ problems become framed as ‘medical’ problems.In this paper I consider the charge of medicalization, which critics often level at new forms of technological self-shaping, and explain how that charge can illuminate – and obfuscate. Then, more briefly, I examine the charge of pharmacological Calvinism, which enthusiasts, in their support of technological self-shaping, often level at (...) critics. And I suggest how that charge, too, can illuminate and obfuscate.Exploring the broad charge of medicalization and the narrower counter charge of pharmacological Calvinism leads me to conclude that, as satisfying as it can be to level one of those charges at our intellectual opponents, and as tempting as it is to lie down and rest with our favorite insight, we need to gather the energy to have a conversation about the difference between good and bad forms of medicalization. Specifically, I suggest that if we consider the ‘medicalization of love,’ we can see why critics of and enthusiasts about technological self-shaping should want (and in some cases have already begun) to distinguish between good and bad forms of such medicalization. (shrink)

Teens' experiences with reproductive health care have been ignored by both the “social problems” moral discourse on teen pregnancy and feminist critiques of medicalization. These perspectives are both gendered and racialized in ways that marginalize African American teen mothers. Interview data with 51 poor African American teen mothers suggest that their reproductive experiences occur within very different contexts than those that have inspired feminist criticisms of medicalization. Before their pregnancies, teens are largely denied access to formal health care (...) services and reproductive information and knowledge, and once pregnant, like adult women, they alternately embrace and resist specific aspects of medical care. Their perspectives provide insights into women's experiences with the formal medical system from an understudied social location, and their narratives expand our understanding of how women's and girls' sexuality is socially constructed as problematic and managed, controlled, and regulated in particular ways depending on their social locations. (shrink)

The Catholic tradition can help to guide patients and practitioners through the complex issues that arise due to the medicalization of death because of contemporary medical technology. The purpose is to illustrate how this religious denomination makes moral decisions in practice. The Catholic tradition moors its moral teachings in the constructive interplay between faith and reason, each of which opens itself to the other for insight and enlightenment. The analysis begins with the theoretical realm to discuss the theological foundations (...) and the meaning of Natural Law that guide the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services. This stance is then applied to several practical concerns that ethically engage issues surrounding the medicalization of death, including maternal-fetal conflicts, patients approaching the end of life, and after death dilemmas. The flexibility and range of Catholic morality can offer astute guidance not only to those who follow this tradition but also to those with different faith perspectives when they encounter the heart-wrenching dilemmas that medical technology presents around death and dying. (shrink)

Many feminists are critical of the practices and institutions that medicalize people’s lives, especially the lives of women and other members of marginalized groups. I argue that this critique does not necessarily imply a rejection of medicine. I give a brief analysis of the concept of medicalization that supports the view that one can desire medicine without desiring medicalization. I then discuss the relations among what is considered natural, socially constructed, and medicalized.

In this paper we address the objectivist logic of bipolar gender attribution, the entitlement of ideal masculine virtues, and the repression of so-called non-male characteristics in persons who live with chronic disabling conditions. More specifically, we show how the living experience of chronic disability continues to be co-opted by patriarchal strategies designed to keep particular bodies both invisible and silent.

Debates about the genuine disease status of controversial diseases rely on intuitions about a range of factors. Adopting tools from experimental philosophy, this paper explores some of the factors that influence judgments about whether low sexual desire should be considered a disease and whether it should be medically treated. Drawing in part on some assumptions underpinning a divide in the literature between viewing low sexual desire as a genuine disease and seeing it as improperly medicalized, we investigate whether health and (...) disease judgments are affected by factors such as an individual’s gender, the cause of the low desire, whether the desire is high or low, and both personal and societal valuations of the condition. Our main findings indicate that (a) the cause of a condition influences whether it is judged a disorder, (b) how the individual values the condition influences whether the condition is seen as a proper target of medical intervention, and (c) perceived dysfunction influences judgments regarding health, disorder classification, medicalization, and medical intervention. Our findings help further illuminate the intricate interplay of factors that influence judgments about health and disease in controversial conditions. (shrink)

The essays on obesity in this issue frequently refer to the recent American Medical Association (AMA) declaration of obesity as a disease. In response to these essays, I describe and explore the significance of ‘risk–factor medicalization’ and how negative unintended consequences with this approach to disease modeling are exemplified in many of the essays. I also relate the essays’ content to the issue of physician hubris in the face of their own helplessness in aiding the obese patient.

This article considers the impact of laws and policies that determine who experiences unplanned pregnancy, who has abortions, and how economic status shapes one's response to unplanned pregnancy. There is a well-documented correlation between abortion and poverty: poor women have more abortions than do their richer sisters. Equally well-documented is the correlation between unplanned pregnancy and poverty. Finally, the high cost of motherhood for poor women and their offspring manifests in disproportionately high lifelong rates of poverty, ill-health and mortality for (...) offspring and mothers, alike. Read together, these factors offer a vivid illustration of the medicalization of poverty. (shrink)

Many current abortion regulations represent an over-medicalization of abortion or a corruption of abortion's true medical nature, with disproportionate consequences to women with lower incomes and lesser means. This article explores the effects of unnecessary and harmful abortion restrictions on women living in poverty. A brief summary of the major abortion rights cases explains how the Constitution, as currently interpreted, vests the government and sometimes the medical profession with the power to protect women's health, rather than granting this power (...) to women themselves. The article then argues for a new approach for protecting women's health and respecting their dignity by reframing reproductive rights as health rights that women themselves can assert. (shrink)

This article presents an analysis of contractual relations in sport from the standpoint of the Croatian legislative system. Due to the complexity of the subject matter, the author considers only a small fragment of it - the significance and the role of sport in Croatian society and the law of contracts „as a cornerstone on which „sports law“ has been built and which is of primary importance in most areas where there is an interface between sport and the law, irrespective (...) of whether the sport is being played at an elite level or at a more humble one“. Bearing in mind the limited extent of this article, the autor tries to provide some clarifications and some guidance on how to deal with the designation and the determination of the applicable law for contracts in the sporting context. Considering that there are different legal regimes which may come into play with regard to the designation of the law applicable to contracts in the sporting context, the author first presents the determination of the applicable law according to the Rome I Regulation and then according to the Croatian Arbitration Act, Swiss Private International Law Act and the CAS Code of Sports-related Arbitration, as the most common in sports practice. Then, the author deals with contracts concluded with minor athletes and the determination of the law applicable to some preliminary questions. Finally, the author presents her perception of the problems encountered and some suggestions for the improvement of the existing legal framework. (shrink)

The pharmaceutical industry and drugs advertisements are sometimes accused of “creating diseases”. This article assesses and describes the role of that industry in fostering medicalization. First, the notions of medicalization and pharmaceuticalization are defined. Then, the problem of distinguishing between harmful overmedicalization and well-founded medicalization is presented. Next, the phenomenon of disease mongering is explained and illustrated by the case analysis of medicalizing pain and suffering in three contexts: (1) the general idea of medicalizing physical pain, (2) (...) the medicalization of grief and (3) disease mongering of pseudoaddiction—a condition promoted in order to increase the demand for opioid pain relievers. (shrink)

This article explores two very different forms in which immoral conduct was problematized over the course of the 19th century. It does this by contrasting the sexual purity politics of the Vice Society and the medicalization of morality as `moral insanity'. Early in the century the Vice Society promoted coercive legislation with the aim of `suppressing vice'. From mid-century, moral insanity theories sought to grapple with vice by disaggregating `moral' from other forms of insanity. These two movements had quite (...) distinct and incompatible lines of development; and they never overtly engaged with each other. The article makes its key argument by demonstrating the way in which such dissimilar trajectories came together towards the end of the century in the `moral hygiene' movement, mobilizing discourses of `degeneration' (and `feeblemindedness') with projects promoting sexual purity. (shrink)

Introduction. The increasing mediation of human life by medicine necessarily raises the question of philosophical understanding the phenomenon of culture medicalization, since today the vector of growing powerful influence of medicine on forming sociocultural processes has clearly emerged. Along with the positive phenomena of the medicalization of life, the volume of “excessive” phenomena of its medicalization is growing. The purpose of the article is to clarify the philo- sophical foundations of the progressive medicaliza- tion of modern culture. (...) Methods. The methodological basis of the study is presented by dialectical, epistemological, axiologi- cal, philosophical-anthropological, and socio-phil- osophical approaches. The study is based on E. Cassirer’s transcendental philosophy, the phenom- enological transcendentalism of E. Husserl; V.S. Stepin’s concept about the system of informational social codes; and P.D. Tishchenko’s concept on the transformation of bio-power in modern culture. Scientific novelty of the research. The author outlines fundamental foundations of modern cul- ture medicalization as a result of mutually similar processes of transforming bio-power and the progress of biomedical sciences. Results. Unfolding, culture compensated for the bodily weakness of a person with the power of his technical inventions, but today they have surpassed the intellectual capabilities of their creator - the individual has to permanently adapt to the grow- ing volume of mass technogenic innovations. The historically formed human need to master the world through its “humanization” is suppressed, and, as a result, the problem of a modern indi- vidual’s request for self-realization through the creative transformation of the social environment is actualized. In this regard, one of the philosophi- cal and anthropological foundations of modern culture can be recognized as a technogenically determined desire of a person to transform his own corporeality, aimed at expanding the capabili- ties of a natural person. Biomedical sciences, as a result of biotechnological progress, turned out to be exactly the social and scientific sphere, which, building up practical activities within the framework of healthcare, considers the person to be both the subject and the object of the biosocial transforma- tion demanded by cultural evolution. Conclusions. The process of medicalization of culture occurs on the basis of two reciprocal fundamental processes: first, the strengthening of the principles of bio-power as “care for all forms of life”; secondly, the progress and technologization of scientific medicine, which in practice provides a socio-cultural demand for a modern prosperous individual. (shrink)

Stress presents an interesting case for the application of medicalization theory. From the 1950s to the 1980s, stress became an established, if not fully deciphered, component of the matrix within which illness developed, as understood by physicians and patients, scientists, and laypeople alike. While the various iterations of the medicalization thesis are useful for analyzing the information flows between the multiplicity of actors engaged in the production and interpretation of the stress concept, they cannot account for all aspects (...) of the evolution of the incorporation of stress into both the medical lexicon and the popular vernacular. To account for the significance of physical explanations for the physiological and pathological effects of stress on the body, this essay expands the model of medicalization to include biologization. This modified model is further deployed as an analytical framework to develop the central argument of this essay: that the medicalization of stress allowed for an expansion of therapeutic options available to practitioners and recipients of mainstream medicine by opening up space for the legitimation of alternative healing practices. Biologization looks to the system of ideas on which medical approaches are based to explain how the reductionist project to find molecular mechanisms of disease causality brought stress and other social and psychological phenomena into the domain of medicine. This expanded model of medicalization can usefully characterize late twentieth and early twenty-first century attitudes toward a wide variety of human disorders whose causes have been found to be molecular in origin. By folding biology into the medicalization thesis, social scientists can train a fresh analytical lens on the role of medicine in recent and contemporary American life. (shrink)

Although medical providers rely on similar tools to “treat” intersex and trans individuals, their enactment of medicalization practices varies. To deconstruct these complexities, we employ a comparative analysis of providers who specialize in intersex and trans medicine. While both sets of providers tend to hold essentialist ideologies about sex, gender, and sexuality, we argue they medicalize intersex and trans embodiments in different ways. Providers for intersex people are inclined to approach intersex as an emergency that necessitates medical attention, whereas (...) providers for trans people attempt to slow down their patients’ urgent requests for transitioning services. Building on conceptualizations of “giving gender,” we contend both sets of providers “give gender” by “giving sex.” In both cases too, providers shift their own responsibility for their medicalization practices onto others: parents in the case of intersex, or adult recipients of care in the case of trans. According to the accounts of most providers, successful medical interventions are achieved when a person adheres to heteronormative gender practices. (shrink)