The functionalist approach
Talcott Persons seed that for society to function efficiently, its members have to be healthy. He describes illness as a form of device and ill people as performing a form of social role “the sick role”.
This are the rights associated with the sick role:
• To be exempt from normal social obligations (school, college or work & from meeting normal family obligations)
• To be cared for
Parsons will only care for the people that are sick in the family.
The responsibilities of the sick role included the individual:
• Taking all reasonable steps to get better and seeking to resume their normal place in society as soon as possible
• Co-operating with medical professionals, particularly doctors and their staff
The overall view is that illness has social consequences.
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They see a doctor has agents that work interests of the employers instead of the patients. Apparently they think that the doctors role is to make sure that people go back to work as soon as possible basically provide the company owner with healthy workers.
The interactionist or social action approach
This is the approach that has the most attention to issues of health and illness. The concerns are:
• The processes that lead a person to define themselves as ill- people vary ill people accept that they are ill and also vary whether they will seek professional help. There are some people with serious illness that does not consider themselves as ill.
• The interaction between the professional and the patient in agreeing how ill they are. After they understand and illness interactionalists are interested in the negotiation that takes place with the professional on trying to agree on the impact of the illness in the patinas life.
• The impacts on a person’s self-image and on their relationships caused by the illness when they are labelled as ill.
The feminist
During 1951 Parson was the first to debate about the sick role. According to Parson, there are the few expectations which need to be met before considering individual sick. Firstly, individual should not cause their own health problem an example could be by eating a high-fat food which leads to overweight and linked to type 2 diabetes. An individual receives a less sympathy. Secondly, individual who is sick must adamant to get well otherwise will see as faking the illness. Thirdly, an individual illness should be confirmed by a physician so they can follow the instruction. The relationship between the physician and the patient is hierarchical where the instruction is provided by the physician and followed by the
WHO defines health as a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity’ (Who.int, 2014). Critics of biomedical model emphasized that this model is less effective when treating patients with long-term illness such as depression and diabetes. They recommended biopsychosocial model for treating complex illness. This model takes into account the whole person which has led to extensive research in many aspects of wellness. It addresses more than just the physical well-being as many people are now ill but they have no presence of disease. Socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity and generational differences all play important roles in the model of wellness (Brannon and feist 2010). It is evidence that taking medicine is not just enough for someone suffering from a long-term to get better. For instance, a patient with cancer may be given chemotherapy by a biomedical Doctor. While a biopsychosocial Doctor may give cancer patient chemotherapy and observe how the patient and family response to the disease. He may also treat the patient’s depression and anxiety of being ill.
The sickness is not something that affects the human body but it is the poverty, violence, unaffordable healthcare, housing crises, food scarcity, and health stigma that has become normal in society. By placing a high value on health and healthcare, the patriarchal society we live in has been able to set a value on people. Thus those which are considered inferior to begin with, such as racial minorities, women or queer people, have a bigger disadvantage. The persons worth is then measured in the ability to sell labor, mediated by identity, and defines our access to the basic needs of life, those who are sick are seen as expendable in exchange of the interest of those who are "well". Hedva states, "To stay alive, capitalism cannot be responsible for our care… its logic of exploitation requires that some of us die” (2015).
In order to understand medical terminology it is essential to know the meaning behind certain words that are used to describe sickness and how those terms have different connotations in each culture. Understanding the semantics of medical terminology can not only help the clinician treat the patient, but it sheds light on the different components that each word represents within a global perspective. Some words that have been interpreted and adjusted to fit social constructions include disease, illness, health, and sickness.
Health as a Social Construction In my essay, I aim to find out why social construction affects the health of our society. Ill health may be defined as 'a bodily or mental state that is deemed undesirable'. This means that health is the condition of the body both physically and mentally. Social construction of health refers to the way health varies from one society to another.
“Health is a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity,” from Kaiser Permanente, is a good quote to tell us the important of mental, physical, and social well-being for our health. If a person doesn’t have all of three conditions, he/she doesn’t have a healthy body and healthy life. Tuyen, my aunt’s brother in law, is an example. He needed to work twelve hours per day without day off and health care to take care of his family. Therefore, he often feel tired, stressed and depressed about his job over twenty years. One day of five years ago, Tuyen got a terrible sick and became mental retardation after that. So, he looked like a baby boy and couldn’t make money for the family
"The Sick Role and the Role of the Physician Reconsidered" by Talcott Parsons discusses about sick role can be consider social deviance and the relation of physicians. Parsons constructs a theoretical view on the individuals who are sick and the theory outlines consisted of two rights and two obligations of individuals who become sick in our society. The author stated that the sick person is not to be held accountable for being sick, but it is the person responsibility to seek help in order to get out of the role. The sick person is obligated to seek help and expected to cooperate with the physician in order to get better. This article focuses on the aspects of the sick role, the first two aspects of the sick role are conditional and the third
The uncertain nature of chronic illness takes many forms, but all are long-term and cannot be cured. The nature of chronic illness raises hesitation. It can disturb anyone, irrespective of demographics or traditions. It fluctuates lives and generates various inquiries for the patient. Chronic illness few clear features involve: long-lasting; can be managed but not cured; impacts quality of life; and contribute to stress. Chronic illnesses can be enigmatic. They often take considerable time to identify, they are imperceptible and often carry a stigma because there is little sympathetic or social support. Many patients receive inconsistent diagnoses at first and treatments deviate on an individual level. Nevertheless, some circumstances require
Society has developed throughout the years, three main sociological perspectives concerning what exactly makes up a society including culture, structure, and power. These three are titled Functionalist Perspective, Conflict Perspective, and Symbolic Interactionalist Perspective; all of which attempt to define society.
A Functionalist perspective: This perspective regards illness as socially deviant behaviour which requires social control. Being defined as ill legitimises exemption from the responsibilities of daily life. The condition, however, is that the patient seeks help and cooperates with the doctor. The ill person has a requirement to attempt to be healed, and the doctor is obligated to help the
She was quiet, didn’t say anything. I asked her again and she said “going through surgery” “medications”. ANALYSIS According to Mol, “We know that the body is an object of medical knowledge”. Referring back to our class reading assignment and relating to my interviewer illness, doctors cannot change her habits for her illness till they don’t understand her way of understanding her own illness.
Employers? GPs? ‘Health Psychology’ (Odgen 2012) states that more responsibility is placed on the individual for their illness, due to the combination of factors such as behaviour, beliefs, and social factors. Consequently more responsibility for treating the illness is place on the person, instead treating them as a passive victim. Unfortunately the perspective of paramedics means they are less empowered to receive support, with 80% of ambulance personnel believing their organisation does not encourage them to talk about mental health (Mind 2015).
Body & Society Talcott Parsons, the Sick Role and Chronic Illness, Matthias Zick Varul, Body & Society 2010 16: 72
Parsons argued that being sick means that the victim enters a role of 'sanctioned deviation'. Since Parsons was a functionalist sociologist, so from a functionalist perspective, a patient is not a productive member of society. Some of the criticism of the sick role is that it doesn’t always apply to everyone, e.g. single mothers or fathers will not be able to be discharged from social responsibilities as they have to keep taking care of their kids. Same thing applies to the sick person who does not have any friends’ or family members around to take over their social responsibilities and help them get better.
Personal attitude, value, and beliefs possess a huge influence on a patient’s state of health and illness. Health can be defined as having a perfect body, not having illness, and is something you can buy. In contrast, illness can be described as how it makes someone feel and pathology affecting the body.