Answer to Question 1
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Answer to Question 2
In studying health, symbolic interactionists focus on the meanings that social actors give their illness or disease and how these affect people's self-concept and relationships with others. According to symbolic interactionists, we socially construct health and illness and how both should be treated. For example, some people explain disease by blaming it on those who are ill. If we attribute cancer to the acts of a person, we can assume that we will be immune to that disease if we do not engage in the same behavior.
Nonsmokers who learn that a lung cancer victim had a two-pack-a-day habit feel comforted that they are unlikely to suffer the same fate.
Although biological characteristics provide objective criteria for determining medical conditions such as heart disease, tuberculosis, or cancer, there is also a subjective component to how illness is defined. This subjective component is very important when we look at conditions such as childhood hyperactivity, mental illness, alcoholism, drug abuse, cigarette smoking, and overeating, all of which have been medicalized. The term medicalization refers to the process whereby nonmedical problems become defined and treated as illnesses or disorders. Medicalization may occur on three levels: (1) the conceptual level (e.g., the use of medical terminology to define the problem); (2) the institutional level (e.g., physicians are supervisors of treatment and gatekeepers to applying for benefits); and (3) the interactional level (e.g., when physicians treat patients' conditions as medical problems).
Sociologists often refer to habitual gambling as the medicalization of deviance because it gives physicians and other medical professionals greater authority to determine what should be considered normal and acceptable behavior and to establish the appropriate mechanisms for controlling deviant behaviors. Medicalization is a two-way process: Just as conditions can be medicalized, so can they be demedicalized. Demedicalization refers to the process whereby a problem ceases to be defined as an illness or a disorder. Examples include the removal of certain behaviors (such as homosexuality) from the list of mental disorders compiled by the American Psychiatric Association and the deinstitutionalizat ion of mental health patients. Symbolic interactionists examine how doctors and patients interact in health care settings. Some physicians may hesitate to communicate certain kinds of medical information to patients, such as why they are prescribing certain medications or what side effects or drug interactions may occur.
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