Doctors have socially constructed power due to offering the universally valued service of health and longevity, and their profession being strictly regulated and requiring extensive training, limiting their numbers. What constitutes illness has changed over time and varies between cultures, being a social rather than purely biological construct. Technological advances in medicine have improved disease detection but also raise ethical issues regarding genetic testing and multiple or premature births.

2. Doctors Have Socially Constructed Power

3. The Rise (and Fall?) of the
Medical Profession
• Doctors have a great amount of social
power, political power, and prestige
for a variety of reasons:
• They offer a universally valued
product—health and longevity.
• There is a limited number of doctors
due to the extensive education and
training and the strict regulation
of the profession.
3

4. What Does It Mean to Be Sick?
Like many other
seemingly universal or
stable concepts,
illness is a social
construct: what it
means to be sick (or
healthy) has changed
throughout history and
differs from one place
to another.
4

5. The U.S. Health-Care System
• Unlike many other industrialized
nations, the United States does not
offer universal health care. The four
main types of health-care coverage in
the United States are:
1. fee-for-service
2. health maintenance organizations
(HMOs)
3. Medicare
4. Medicaid
5

6. The U.S. Health-Care System
• Technological advances in medicine have
allowed for:
• the detection of diseases, genetic
anomalies in fetuses which raise
difficult ethical questions and have
major social implications.
• multiple births (often due to assisted
reproductive technology) and premature
births, which present further medical
and ethical dilemmas.
6

7. Technology and Medicine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7zbFzyactI

8. Discrepancies in Health Care
There are numerous health
discrepancies between races in the
United States, with whites having the
best outcomes overall. The starkest
differences can be found between
whites and blacks.
8

9. Discrepancies in
Health Care
• While some of the discrepancy is due
to differences in socioeconomic
status, there are still significant
differences between whites and
blacks with the same income and
education level, which implies that
racism plays a role in people’s
overall health.
9

10. Discrepancies in
Health Care
• There are three main theories that
attempt to explain why people with
higher socioeconomic status have
better health:
• selection theory
• drift explanation
• social determinants theory
10

11. Discrepancies in Health Care
Selection theory
the connection between low income and
poorer health – has mediating factors. For
instance, other factors, like genetics,
might affect both socioeconomic status
and health.
11

12. Discrepancies in Health Care
The drift explanation
states that there is a connection
between income and health. If you
have poor health, you might be
less likely to find gainful
employment.
12

13. Discrepancies in Health Care
Social determinants theory
states that social
status can determine a
person’s health.
13

14. Discrepancies in Health Care
• Married people tend to live longer, but
it is not clear whether marriage actually
benefits a person’s health or if
healthier people tend to get married.
• Women live longer than men, which can be
attributed in part to the types of
illnesses each sex is more susceptible to
as well as to how willing each sex is to
seek medical care.
14

15. Discrepancies in Health Care
• Large families and children born
close together are both associated
with higher child mortality rates,
due to greater demands on parents’
financial and emotional resources.
15

16. The Sociology of Mental Health
• The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual
(DSM) provides a standard categorization
of mental disorders and their definitions.
• Changes in this manual, particularly
from its second to third editions, have
strongly influenced how mental illness
is understood and treated.
• The DSM 5 argued over whether
narcissism is a mental illness.
16

17. The Sociology of Mental Health
There has been a significant increase in the use
of pharmaceuticals to treat mental illness.
Some negative aspects of this change include:
• devaluation of the benefits of talk therapy
• overprescribing or mis-prescribing of
pharmaceuticals
• stigma attached to taking medication for
mental illness
• increasing power of pharmaceutical companies.
which have benefited from the growth of the
diagnostic approach
17

18. Global Health
• Health disparities between groups within
the United States are dwarfed by the
disparities that exist between the
United States and developing countries.
• Many developing countries
are still struggling to
provide their citizens
with safe drinking water,
sanitation, and basic
health care.
18

19. Bottled Water and World Health
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Zn0qi80IIY