The study of health from a social perspective

Health is a topic of crucial importance to sociology. Simone Sarti and Marco Tirano, who work in the Department of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Milan, describe this in their article titled Health study. Sociology perspective (Carrueche, p. 222, 22 eur). The underlying assumption is that disease is not only an organic fact. There are many links between disease, society and the social dimensions of disease: diseases vary according to age and social conditions; Disease and health are determined according to the needs and expectations linked to the environment in which the individual lives, and to family and professional relationships; Methods of response to disease and forms of treatment are socially conditioned. Social inequalities in health constitute one of the most serious forms of social injustice.

health Recognized as one of the basic rights of human beings, it must be guaranteed to all, however, social inequalities still generate inequalities in health. The country and the regions should propose a long-term strategy to reduce disparities in health and social quality of life. Social medicine, by investigating the links between diseases and social factors and establishing the idea of ​​disease as a social fact, has contributed to creating the appropriate context for the development of social sciences.

Today, the sociology of health is a dynamic field that embraces a plurality of perspectives and addresses multiple topics, from the study of health services and the organizations developed to care for patients, to the study of the medical profession and the doctor-patient relationship. . While health in Western medicine tends to be described as the absence of disease and as something that can be objectively verified, sociology takes a more holistic approach and multidimensional definition of health. Thus the sociological definition of health is similar to the one adopted by the World Health Organization in 1946, according to which: “Health is constituted as a complete state of physical, mental and social well-being and should not be understood simply as the absence of disease or infirmity.”

target dimension Health intertwines with the standard. An example in this sense is shaped by the process of medical treatment, that is, the process in which medical knowledge is applied to behaviors that are not directly attributable to biology, but which medicine still exercises control over. In this context, the process of medical treatment means the imposition of the medical paradigm in defining and treating even intrinsic social problems. As Simone Sarti and Marco Terrano, the article’s authors, write, “The richness of sociological insight reveals itself in all its power when confronted with heterogeneous phenomena that pose extremely complex and multidimensional challenges, such as health.”