We can say that the reason for medicalization is “overdiagnosis”, because in order for something to be a disease it must first be defined. for example sadness, sorrow, embarrassment, failure, inability to focus conditions such as ADHD (attention deficit and hyperactivity disorder) and depression have now turned into pathologies due to medicalization. In Illich’s perspective, medicalization first emerged in the 1960s. In this regard, we can say that they go hand in hand with capitalism. Medicalization actually plays into capitalism’s hands, because the medicalization of everything can lead people to consume more of the health care.

In short, all of these things can impair individuals’ ability to deal with problems, according to sociologist Ivan Illich. Well, Illich, human medicine coping skills What does he actually mean by saying it hurts?

Medicalization can make people dependent on the medical field for their health.

Medicalization, the relationship between patient and doctor unbalanced can make one. For example, individuals can easily waive their right to control their own health. In this case, people may become too dependent on medicine’s judgment of their own health. At this point, Illich says that the definition of many conditions that are considered common in life as illnesses makes people addicted to drugs. According to Illich, this addiction is daily life skills it makes you forget. We can make this dependence understandable with examples as follows; Menopause is a natural phenomenon that is unique to women, but after medicine defined menopause as a problem and incorporated it into its field, women began to resort to menopausal drugs, take drugs and control the menopause process. overseeing drugs.

Another sociologist Szasz mentions that medicalization first appeared in psychiatry in the 1970s. As we mentioned at the outset, moods and behaviors that were previously considered normal became abnormal with a diagnosis of psychiatry and started to get names like depression and hyperactivity. Thus, individuals suffering from this condition had to take psychiatric drugs and go to the doctor on certain days every week, because their existence entered medicine, perhaps because they had a sad, sad and melancholic temperament. The inclusion of anything in so many fields of medicine can harm individuals’ natural coping abilities and make them always need someone else’s care.

According to Illich; Medicine reduces people’s strategies to suffer by disrupting social life.

Illich says that survival is an art for cultures that have not undergone medicalization. So what do you actually mean by this situation? of suffering we can say that it emphasizes that these cultures have not yet disappeared.

For example, Illich makes the first example of the medicalization of health on the medicalization of birth. until the 19th century when the birth is normalIn the 19th century and beyond, childbirth was no longer a normal process. In the past, women went to gynecological examinations while helping each other during the birth process. In fact, all women gave birth normally, but nowadays you can see that they resort to cesarean section to make the delivery painless and easier. This is where the critique of medicalization comes into play, because with a method like cesarean section, a normal process for women becomes medical. In other words, as we can see from this example, Illich mentions that patients become completely dependent on drugs and, over time, move away from many of the characteristics that were once considered normal.

Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4