M1 – The biomedical and socio-medical models of health.

M1 – The biomedical and socio-medical models of health.

Biomedical and the socio-medical models of health

The biomedical model of health looks at individual physical functioning and describes bad health and illness as the presence of disease and symptoms of illness as a result of physical causes such as injury or infections and doesn’t look at the social and psychological factors. E.g. biomedical models assume that the complexity of individual can be reduced so that by accumulating facts about the parts that make up their body a decision about how to fix that part will result in health

The social model of health looks at how society and our environment affect our everyday health and wellbeing, including factor such as social class, occupation, education, income and poverty, poor diet and pollution. E.g. poor housing and poverty are causes to respiratory problems and in response to these causes and origins of ill health. According to Clift notes. The socio-model aimed to encourage society to include better housing and introduce programmes to tackle poverty as a solution.

The focus of these models is principally to explain why health inequalities exist and persist. According to Clift notes. The key cultural explanation places emphasis upon pathological (i.e. personal/individual) consequences of behaviour such as poor diet, excessive alcohol consumption, smoking, drug addiction, sexual practices or lack of exercise. On this argument, inequalities in health will be reduced when people make healthier personal behavioural decisions.

The health selection explanation argues that people in ill health will inevitably fall to the bottom of society and that therefore inequality is inevitable and will persist. People in this group are also least likely to alter unhealthy lifestyles. According to Clift notes 2016. The structural explanation sees factors outside the individual’s control affecting life and health chances. Issues relating to the form and nature of employment and unemployment are critical; as is the individual’s position in society relating to, for example, home ownership, education, income, quality of life, living conditions and poverty (where few people have any real choice). Knowledge of health issues and of how poor health can be avoided or treated is equally critical

Socio- model of health is one where:

• The state of health is socially constructed resulting historical, social and cultural influences that have shaped perceptions of health and ill health.
• The root causes for diseases and ill health are to be found in social factors, such as the way society is organised and structured.
• Root causes are identified through beliefs and interpretation for example, from a feminist perspective, roots causes relate to patriarchy and oppression.
• Knowledge is not exclusive but has a historical, social and cultural context as it is shaped by these involved.

• According to (ace.org) and (eoc.org.uk) state that the socio medical model recognises the power that has been vested in the medical profession, through social construction of health and illness, The socio- medical recognises the opportunity for health prevention and com-munity- based approaches as it identifies the importance of individuals in maintaining their own health.
• The biomedical of health is one where:

• The state of health is a biological fact and the norm
• The body is a machine and ill health results from dysfunction of that machine
• Ill health is a deviation from the norm
• Ill health is caused by biological factors such as viruses, bacteria, genetic character-istic or trauma
• The causes of ill health is identified through the process of diagnosis, considering the signs and symptoms
• Medical knowledge is based on facts which legitimise and privileges if as superior to all other types of knowledge. It is the exclusive domin of the expert medical practitioner (this has ensured the high states of doctors in society
• Alternative approaches are invalid and interior. Biomedical treatment as only valid and appropriate response to ill health.
• Individual play little or no part in the interventions to restore the body to health
• According to Strech Health and Social Care 2011. There is no consideration of the individual’s interpretation of health and ill health or social factor that may contribute to ill health. Finding a cure is a greater concern than preventing ill health Different Sociological approaches to health and ill health This interpretation thus incorporates the wider social perspectives that affect individuals’ well-being. It focuses on the barriers and difficulties that prevent the ‘ill’ person from having access to health and ‘normality’. These include: lack of information or education on health care; lack of transport facilities to enable contact with doctors, hospitals, etc., difficult access to medical buildings; lack of support from and contact with others; limited protection by legislation; lack of funds or limited access to financial support; limited work opportunities. Sociology offers a range of different perspectives on health and illness. Functionalist theorists see the role of medicine as central to the effective organisation of society, with its key function being to keep people healthy and to treat the sick, thus enabling them to be healthy contributors to society as parents, workers, etc. Hence doctors have a key role in determining a person’s health status (deciding how ‘well’ or ‘ill’ the person is, declaring them fit or unfit for work, prescribing drugs to control behaviour, ward off infection or pre-vent from disease, determine whether an illness is ‘deviant; or ‘imaginary’) – reflecting the medical role of health care.    Negative concept of health Positive concept of health
• More positives concepts of health are often described in relation to being able to do things, being resilient to stress, disease and being able to cope with life rather than an absence of ill health. E.g. those who have a positive concept of health might describe the feeling of being healthy as having energy to be active and being physically fit. Health may also be viewed in terms of the body’s condition or appearance, for example, having clear skin.
• Many people do not really consider their state of health or think of themselves as being healthy in their daily lives. They find the concept of health difficult to quantity or describe as it is so much as part of their normal experience. Many people therefore have negative concept of health because thinking of it as the absence of ill health. For these people being healthy means not having anything wrong with you, no illnesses, diseases or injuries. Concepts of health appear to change with age with many older people describing being healthy in these negative terms whereas younger people talk about health terms of eating the right things and talking exercise. The individual’s state of health at any one time will also impact on their concept of health. If they are experiencing symptoms of diseases or illness or are injured, they are more likely to apply negative definition than a positive one. However, re-search by Baxter (1990) found that even if people had a disease they could still consider themselves to be healthy as they framed this in relation to how well people recover from ill-ness. For example, people may say I got better quicker because I am healthy, Gender also appear to have a bearing on a concepts of health with women conceptualising health as being in control of their physical bodies through taking positive action, such as taking care of themselves by eating sensibly and taking exercise, while men in particular tend to consider health as the norm and so do not think they have to an active part in achieving this state of well- being.
• Postmodernist theorists see disease as a social construct, a concept based on assumptions in society about what is normal or abnormal. They also question the practice of medicine by so-called medical experts, and argue that acupuncture, faith healing and homeopathy (among others) might be just as valid as treatments.
• Feminist theories highlight the fact that the most powerful and specialist professional areas of medicine are dominated by men, while health policy (made by parliament) is similarly male-dominated. Hence doctors are likely to see women as neurotic and emotionally unbalanced, attribute their problems (social or psychological) to having a different biology from that of men, and assume that the maternal instinct and motherhood are the key elements in a woman’s life, and that therefore any denial of this instinct will cause depression or other forms of ill health.
• Conflict theorists take issue with the functionalist approach, arguing that medicine is not merely a supportive social institution, but also serves itself as a profession. Its role is thus to justify its expert status and to claim that its practitioners have the power to diagnose who is ill, why, and how the patient should be treated. Medicine operates within a capitalist system, and this enables doctors to assist in the social production of health and illness. The outcome is significant inequalities of health and disease, despite massive medical advances over time.
• According to Clift Notes 2016. Interactionists argue that illness is not simply the existence of biological disease, but a function of how a particular disease or the ill person is perceived by others and how that perception is acted upon. For example, perceptions of mental illness indicate how important the image or definition of the illness or ill person can be. Illness is what a particular society, at a specific point in time, for certain groups or individuals, views it to be, with the medical profession playing a critical role in the labelling of illness and ill people.
• The biomedical model of health and illness is criticised by sociologists for its narrow focus on the medical control of disease, and its limited usefulness for providing a community-based service. By contrast, the social model stresses the impact of the environment on health, the need for collective methods in the community to address health issues (particularly health inequalities) and health promotion. Hence the social model suggests that individual and community health results from complex cultural and structural influences particular groups of people – ethnic minorities, women, the elderly, etc.