Marzouq Alsaid Essays - Medicine, Actuarial Science, Demography

Marzouq Alsaid Race, Gender, Health COM 4251 19 January 2016 Fish Bowl Insight # 1: Social Construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications (Conrad, P. and Barker, K. 2010) Insight # 1: Cultural meanings have an impact on the way the illness is experienced, how the illness is depicted, the social response to the illness, and what polices are created concerning the illness. (Conrad and Barker 69) This concept takes me back to my home country, and makes me think about how the social judgment on certain types of illness could negatively impact the patient self mental and physical statues. For instance, until nowadays majority of people consider any person who seek psychiatric physician assistance as crazy person who doesn't have a control over his mind. Unfortunately, this stigma has discouraged people from going to a psychiatric hospitals or even expressing their mental issues with relatives or closer friends. Thus, they could feel lack of support or that they are not welcomed, which could result in exacerbating their suffering. Question#1: What are some of the factors that helped stigmatizing a disease in a specific way? Insight # 2: For sociologist, one of the most troubling results of medicalization is that it encourages medical solutions while ignoring or downplaying the social context of complicated problems (Conrad and Barker 752) I found this very provocative because I tend to put the blames on the individual rather than taking into consideration the environmental factors that lead to an increase of the problem. After reading this passage, I started to realize how different food commercials or cigarettes advertisements have contributed negatively in raising obesity and the amount of people smoking. Furthermore, the easy access and the affordable price for a packet of cigarettes facilitates in increasing the problem. Question#2: What are effective strategies to decrease the impact of social environmental factors that contribute to a specific illness? Insight # 3: Negative metaphorical meanings of cancer, as evil or repressive are common in our society and significantly impact those afflicted with the disease (Conrad and Barker 71) This reminded me about the book Communicating About Health 4th edition in chapter two (Current issues about health). The chapter talked about the Catholic Church during the middle ages of Europe tried to associate illness with sin. They could use this concept to preach their believes and emphasize how it is important for the patients to purchase some relics or statues that could help them recover, make more offerings and receive God blessings. Question#3: Would negative metaphorical meanings of a disease be challenged or over come with positive vibes and optimism? Insight # 4: The social model of disability, grounded on social constructionist tenets, conceptually distinguishes impairment (Conrad and Barker 70) This sentence made me think about how unfortunately, our society today forces us to treat handicapped people in a very kind way and demonstrate a compassion behavior. In my opinion, delivers a message to the handicapped person saying they are weak because we are showing you this amount of compassion. I think this method of treating them this way makes them feel agitated. If they were people with no disability then we wouldn't treat them with that excessive amount of compassion and kindness. Question#4: How could it be possible to alter the concept of handicapped person as a person with disability and start seeing him as regular human being? Insight # 5: Contested Illnesses patients, their problems are all in their head (Conrad and Barker 70) This sentence makes me think about the principle of verification, which states that any illness considers false until there is a physical symptoms that appear, either you prove it or it is a doubt. In my point of view, I think the caregivers are treating the contested illness patients with this principle, because as explained in the article no matter how hard or precise the patient tried to explain his sufferers, medical staff will view it as overreacting or some head noses. Quesiton#5: Are the caregivers aware that the way they look at this illnesses it falls under the principle of verification? New Words: Word 1 Social Construction: is a conceptual framework that emphasizes the cultural and historical aspects of phenomena widely thought to be exclusively natural (Conrad and Barker 67) Word 2 Contested