SOC 101: Medicine in America Sociology in the News Yuchan Hu Functionalist perspectives on health and medicine: sick role The title of the news article that I selected is: Mental health risks linked to working too much. This article describes that workaholics are likely to suffer from mental disorders (such as anxiety and ADHD symptoms). The researchers also found that workaholics 'scored higher on all the psychiatric symptoms than non-workaholics'. And compared to non-workaholic, workaholics have more symptoms of anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The workaholics have seven criteria can be judged, these standards including: people who spend free time to work; people who spend more actual working time than scheduled working time; …show more content…
It also describes workaholics become unhealthy because of overwork. Thus, I find that workaholics do not implement the sick role, even if they display the symptoms of psychiatric disorders. In fact, the workaholics are sick so they should perform the sick role. First of all, they do not need to perform their role behavior in their daily life. However, they continue to work hard. Even no work makes them feel uncomfortable and stressed. Secondly, patients should attempt to regain health. In other words, the patients have the obligation to become healthy. However, the workaholics do not think that their psychiatric disorders are serious, and they even thinks that these disorders do not needs to be cured. Also, they think their works are more important. Therefore, they do not want to waste their valuable time in the treatment of this type of disease, because these psychiatric disorders will require the long-term treatment. Therefore, their psychiatric disorders have always existed. Finally, the workaholics should go to the doctor, and seek technical assistance. However, the workaholics will not spend their time on treating mental illness. Otherwise, the data will not show that there are so much workaholics display signs of psychiatric disorders. In my opinion, the disorders lead workaholics, and workaholics would cause psychiatric disorders, so it is a vicious circle. This vicious circle is caused by workaholics do not play the sick role when they are sick. If workaholic once felt mental pressure, they should go see a doctor, or relax themselves instead of doing more work. They did not play the sick role, it leads to their ability of working is affected. And their mental health also is unhealthy, because the mental stress can affect their productivity and
According to the American Psychiatric Association (APA), it defines mental illness as Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in thinking, emotion or behavior (or a combination of these). Mental illnesses are associated with distress and/or problems functioning in social, work or family activities. (What Is Mental Illness? (n.d.). Retrieved June 26, 2016, from https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/what-is-mental-illness). Mental Disorders are a wide range of mental conditions that affect mood, thinking, and behavior. There are a lot of different psychological disorders here is a list of the major psychological disorders and their definitions:
To sum up, the article is interesting and it is well composed or writing as well because the story brings a lot of people’s attention to the problems we are facing in each and any country in the world that many people does not think it is a problem but it is a problem to the society. The issue of mental problems is a big issue that the government needs to challenge by improving in providing mental hospitals to the mentally sick people. The writer of this article tries to bring the attention of the society and also the government so that they can see the dangers of mental
De Santis is an autoworker on the van assembly line at the General Motors plant. She performs the same simple task, and repeats the same procedures everyday. There are no opportunities for her to learn new skills or face any new challenges. It is easy to imagine how boring and frustrated anyone in her position would become. In addition to the challenge of her routine she also works on high stress and overload because of the non-stop, always catching up nature of the assembly line. According to research, boredom can cause daydreams and strain which together can threaten her safety. These negative experiences impact her job satisfaction and motivation.
According to chapter twelve in “Work Accommodation and Retention in Mental Health” employers have an economic and a social interest in the mental health condition of their workers. There is recognition that the workplace environment can either help or hurt the productivity of long term employment which is why there has been a shift from a medical to social model of workplace health. As stated by Perez and Wilkerson “Fifty percent of those who miss work because of mental or emotional problems will take either 13 or more days off, or will never return to their jobs” (as cited in Work, 2010, pg. 295). Large multinational corporations like Johnson and Johnson have adopted ideas of keeping the workplace healthy with an understanding of the
Prisons act as a total institution where inmates are put on a strict schedule and fall under one of the most gruesome forms of social control. Because of this, many inmates rebel resulting in prisons having to increase security and impose stricter punishments. As a result of this, less effort has been put into helping mentally ill inmates. The term panopticon, coined by Bentham illustrates the concept that the prison design would allow guards to see into cells but not allowing prisoners to see out. Thus, this would allow guards to have omniscient power over the inmates. Fortunately, this never worked as a prison, however prison has created a type of mental health panopticon. This allows for mentally ill parents to feel like they are always being observed; similarly to that of an experiment. Despite prisons best attempt to equally serve all inmates to the best of their ability, prioritizing security and punishment has lead to a mental health panopticon. As a result, prisons environments have exacerbated negative behaviours, created an inhumane environment for prisoners and lack the means to aid in mental health.
were males, 7221, and the rest 564 were females. In order to see if the participates had any sort of mental illness they looked at self reported treatment, related to mental health (Biltz). The results of this study found that the amount of inmates that participating in this study had a disproportionally number of inmates with mental healthy that were physically victimized. According to this study prisons are a violent and unsafe place for people who suffer from mental illness (Biltz). Male inmates who suffered from any form of mental illness were nearly 1.6 times more likely to be physically victimized while in prison. Females inmates who had a mental illness were even more likely to suffer from physical victimization, they were nearly 2 times more likely than male inmates with mental illness (Blitz). Inmates that were African Americans and Hispanics were more likely to be physically victimized either by inmates or staff.
In my research I noted that I was sleep deprived the whole day where I noticed that I only got a total of 5 hours of sleep throughout the week which is good when compared to other days where I slept for only 3 hours along with things disturbing me while I slept. In addition to my research I noticed that the caffeine I consumed from my beverage were the ones to help calm my stress down and help me stay alert with my daily activities of school, work and other daily activities I usually do. Finally in my research I noticed I was dozing off at school, work, the commute travel to school and other activities I normal do every day like my school work. The repeating thoughts of not having income for housing has influence on my well-being where in the graph it shows a visual of me having constant difficult in going to sleep which this thought is on my mind along with things causing me to not sleep
Long work hours lend little time for leisure, which Randall said is an essential aspect of a person’s overall health. She said that people who repeatedly work overtime are too tired to exercise or spend time with family members.
The processes of life were being born, growing old, having illness, and death. In our life, we suffered from different sickness. It was a good reason for the absent from school, work or other daily working activities. However, in the view of a sociologist, the people who were in the sick role, they were regarded as having committed a crime and it was treated as deviant behavior (Peter & Meredith, 1998). In the structural functional model, people took various tasks and role in society or in different institutions. These were dependable with the structures and norms of the society. Did sickness have any effective elements in society? This paper would describe the concept of sick role and the application in the nursing practice (Parson, 1979).
Sociology of Health and Illness The sociological approaches focus on identifying the two sociological theories. We critically analysed the biomedical model and doctor-patient relationship. We also evaluated how the medical professionals exercise social control and the medical professional’s contribution to ill health. The difference between society and health is studied by sociologists in relation to health and illness.
The definition of workaholism from a dictionary would be someone who has a compulsion to work all time and a workaholic is someone who loves to work or who is addicted to work. How can this people work throughout the whole day and be happy and never tired knowing that they sleep only for 4-5 hours a day. Perhaps the main reason for this is that people evaluate themselves more on measurable things such as personal achievements and financial worth – not emotional wellness. People often tend to feel guilty if they are not constantly being productive, as they tend to consider relaxation a waste of precious time. They need work to feel good. Workaholics are people who put the work on first place. Usually they need to prove themselves to the their colleagues or their bosses so they would praise them. Sometimes workaholism occurs because the person works to avoid the pain. Workaholism is addiction and all addictions are in a way avoidance of pain. They work just to cover the pain and not deal with it. Some of the workaholics became what they are because of greed. They can never have enough so they want to work as much as possible. Sometimes the hard workers are being referred as workaholics. While hard workers are ready to work some extra time to finish a project or to meet a deadline, the workaholic uses all his extra time to work. Workaholics don’t have hobbies except if they are related to the job such as golf games with business partners. Everybody thinks tha...
Increasingly, good mental health in the workplace is an issue being raised. Job stresses are being recognized as affecting work performance and also an individual’s over-all well-being. There is a lot of information available about how to promote good mental health in the workplace but perhaps insufficient initiatives actually being used. Providing employees with information promoting good mental health alerts them to the problems but may not achieve the solutions. Within the larger society good physical health is overwhelmingly accepted as the first step to good mental health. Can mental health issues in the workplace be addressed in the same way, by
In the research, study shows that those who play video games for 24/hr a week had trouble doing well in school and are likely to have a pathological issue with video games. But in the research, the pathology does not correlate with much of anything and it is something that has to do with “having too much of it”. But according to the article, it is not to clear to whether or not you can distinguish a non-pathological gamer and pathological
Workers don’t have enough leisure time, and that affects their lifestyle seriously. Lucas points out 25% of employees always work straight from the morning into the evening and approximately 50% of people eat lunch at their workplace. Also, 40% of employees have to keep staying in touch after they have already worked for long hours. Based on those statistics, we can tell employees can’t leave from the workplace even though they’re on their break. In “Work-life balance holds the key,” Kristine Yang states that a 27-years old copywriter died after working for 30 consecutive hours. Employees need to balance the time of work and the time of rest. Sometimes, they need a relaxation in order to get away from the intensive workload. If they don’t pay attention for work-life balance, that might lead to some serious issues such as the copywriter. Therefore, Lucas wants us to consider more seriously about taking a break after working for a long
Sociology and psychology is the study of the mind and the environment around us which makes us who we are. These theories assist us to understand behaviour from individual and societal levels.