Sociological Model Of Mental Illness Essay

Modern society focuses on the behavior of people and study how each individual with certain mental disorders behave. Before the medicalization of certain mental disorders, any psychological and sociological issues were not addressed properly or address at all. "The sociological model of mental illness argues that definitions of mental illness reflect subjective social judgments regarding whether behaviors are acceptable and understandable. Behaviors are labeled mental illness when they contravene cognitive norms, performance norms, or feeling norms" (Weitz, 2012). The behavior of each individual was not the center of attention and focus of medical studies. The psychological and sociological aspect was not considered important in the medicine

"Throughout history, explanations for illness have commonly blamed ill persons for their illnesses. Such explanations encourage policy makers to ignore how social and environmental factors can foster illness (Weitz, 20120)." The society need to recognize that it is not the person’s fault when they are emotionally or mentally ill. People in the society need to realize that those who tend to harm themselves or others and commit suicide are suffering from a serious mental illness. Another reason why there are some people that commit suicide is because of how they get treated by the people around them. For example, gay and lesbian people were not socially acceptable until lately, even now, it is still not entirely socially acceptable even though the same sex marriage is already legally recognized in the whole United States. Therefore, they have to deal with the emotional and social stress in their daily lives for being unsocially acceptable. “Suicide is a serious health problem and the second leading cause of death in 15–29 year olds worldwide. Health professionals are expected to prevent suicide, but their lack of knowledge and experience with suicidal behavior has contributed to the perception of these patients as being challenging” (Norheim, Grimholt, Loskutova, &

On top of the physical illness that can stress possibly cause, the mental impact on individual is detrimental. One of the mental illness that turned into medicalization and recognized as an illness these days is depression. "The process through which a condition or behavior becomes defined as a medical problem requiring a medical solution is known as medicalization (Conrad, 2007; Weitz, 2012).” Depression was not recognized as an illness until the medicalization recognized it as an emotional disorder, although it is normal to be sad at times, it can turn into an illness or disorder. Being sad and lonely all the time or for quite a long period of time can be a sign of depression. When a person’s daily life is affected and cannot perform normally at work, school, or at home because of feeling sad, lonely or hopelessness, it can be a sign of depression. Sometimes people with low self-esteem and not having a lot of friends or social support can lead to loneliness and eventually feeling depress. “We know that low levels of self-esteem are associated with a variety of negative consequences, including higher levels of loneliness and depression” (Richman et al., 2016). In order "for medicalization to occur, one or more organized social groups must have both a vested interest in medicalization and sufficient power to convince