medicalization

is the authoritarian intervention of medicine in an ever-widening field of individual and collective forms of existence.

For Foucault, 'medicalisation' involved the authoritarian intervention of medicine in an ever-widening field of individual and collective forms of existence (Foucault 2004b/1976 p10). It appears that health as such has been transformed into an object of medical treatment and industry including self-medication. Medical interventions no longer respond to patients' wishes, their pain or malaise. Foucault believed that medicalisation was not something new. Medical authorities had always been concerned with other phenomena than just diseases, such as social behaviour, and traditionally functioned as agents of social control.'

is a process which entails the absorption of ever-widening social arenas and behaviors into the jurisdiction of biomedical treatment through a constant extension of pathological terminology to cover new conditions and behaviors.

medicalization. This process entails the absorption of ever-widening social arenas and behaviors into the jurisdiction of biomedical treatment through a constant extension of pathological terminology to cover new conditions and behaviors. Health clinics, health maintenance organizations, and other medical providers now offer classes on managing stress, controlling obesity, overcoming sexual impotence, alcoholism, and drug addiction, and promoting smoking cessation.

is rampant. Everything that used to be a sin is now considered a disease.

Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease. (Bill Maher)

is that tendency whereby everything that used to be a sin is now taken to be a disease.

Everything that used to be a sin is now a disease.

medicalization, n.All

medicalization