The Marxist approach towards health and illness closely analyses the health & social care classes. They suggest that patient’s interests are served based on where they are in social class hierarchy. People who are employers are expected to be healthy to ensure the company has a healthy and strong work force. This will be impossible without the doctors as they have the duty to assign people that they are fit enough to go back to work. In contrast, company employees may purchase things in which the company produce. For example: tobacco, alcohol or junk food. Whilst factories & firms are polluting the atmosphere, with the toxic waste they produce. These all contribute to ill health but the government still allows and promotes companies to make profit out of this health threatening things. The Marxist approach would oppose the work of the government as they feel they do not do enough to tackle & abolish the things that contribute or lead to illness as they are put off by the fact that it cost a lot of money. Social class also plays a big role into ill health & health. Those who are lower in the social hierarchy will most likely live in a deprived area & high levels of pollution will most likely have higher rates of ill people than those who live in a rich area, which have higher life expectancy. Linking this back to Aziz and Tamsela’s case, they are living in a poor condition & are unemployed. Their house is also over crowded which means they will be classed at the bottom of the social class hierarchy. As they both do not work a doctor at a health service may not serve their interests to their full potential as they are not assigned to any company which will need them to be well.
The Interactionist Approach looks into the ill health & health topic in depth and tries to firstly unfold the reasons as to why or how someone will class themselves as sick and secondly how the professional and patient communicate and come to agreement about their illness. Interactionist focus on finding links between professionals and people, friends & family. The Interactionist approach believes that some people who are seriously ill will not class themselves as ill in order to retain their self-image and relationships. They question how people decide if they are ‘ill enough’ to go to the doctor. Friends and relatives are often important in interpreting something as a ‘symptom’ serious enough for the doctor’s attention. patients’ reasons for seeking medical help are affected by cultural background. Zola showed this in His study in the USA found that Italians often got help because symptoms interfered with personal relationships. Anglo-Saxons were more likely to seek help if symptoms affected their work, while the Irish were likely to present symptoms because of pressure from others to seek help. Doctors generally have more power in these situations, but patients are not always passive and may try to create their own diagnosis and get the doctor to agree to it. For example although, Tamsela’s mother was classed as depressed she may have not wanted to go to the doctors , but may have been forced by Aziz and tamsela in order to help her.
The feminist approach looks more at the medical profession and the domination of males. They also disagree with the way the male contraceptive pill has low priority & lacks promotion which may have to do with keeping the image of the ‘dominant’ male. After reviewing the numbers feminists discovered that when it came to issues of mental health, anxiety and depression there was an obvious difference between females who suffered from these too males. Feminist concluded that it is due to the major roles a women has within society and in a family. Especially, if unemployed and with kids, a women has many domestic duties to carry out which include, cooking, cleaning etc. But also making sure she is building an emotional attachment with her kids the work load can be too much for the woman and can lead her to becoming stressed or even depressed. However, those in the medical profession may not come to this conclusion instead they will diagnose it as a medical problem and prescribe medicines to solve the issue. Feminists believe that the double life majority of woman live is the cause of ill health. Some women are the bread makers of the family but still manage to come home and carry out their domestic duties. Women deserve more credit as social inequalities has a big impact in society. Tamsela’s mother is depressed & is on medication; this indicates that due to the fact that her daughter’s family is suffering and living in poor conditions whilst her husband is also sick. This has left her feeling depressed. However, I suggest that her mother has gone to see the GP and was seen by a male doctor who may have just classed her as another mentally ill female that will be able to recover by prescribing drugs. In reality, the drugs will help the mother feel better but they will still be in the same condition which means the mother will continue to feel depressed.
The Bio-Medical Model of Health and Illness is the use of scientific factors Such as tests & experiments to determine an illness. It suggests that the body and mind are separate, and the cause of illnesses rely on the physical body. The bio-medical model suggests that drugs and surgery are the only cures to illnesses. One disadvantage of this is for example Tamsela’s mum, who was prescribed drugs for ‘depression’. Without actually tackling the reason of why she is depressed, she will just continuously be taking the drugs to cure it when in fact it could just make her become addicted to it. This could make her even more ill, & still will not help her problems. On the other hand an advantage of this is that it focuses on the treatment and the management for those that are sick.
Socio-medical model of health focuses on the environment and how it affects people. These include poverty, diet, pollution, and access to clean water and toilet facilities. These factors have a strong impact on the overall health and wellness of individuals, communities, and even countries. For example Aziz & Tamsela are living poor housing. poor housing and poverty causes breathing problems, & Tamsela already has asthma , it make it worse and possibly lead to death . One advantage is that it aims to help these causes of ill health & tries to encourage society to include better housing by introducing programmes to tackle poverty as a solution. A weakness is that it takes time to look for factors effecting the illness and a prevention to stop it happening again which could be impossible.
Fatima Kamara CN06
Student no : 30030456
Group 2
by
fayonline (student)
