Mortality rates are collected from the official and required registration of deaths, and the causes of death from a legally required death certificate.
The information on the morbidity rates can be drawn from a wide range of sources this can be the doctor’s surgeries, hospital admissions and appointments and the registration of notifiable diseases. There have also been more general studies that have measured the levels of ill-health, although these studies may not have been related to any specific condition, because of this they will use self- reported measures of health, this is where they will ask people to describe and rank on a scale of 1 to 10 on how healthy they feel.
Difficulties in measuring health
When people have to refer back to the statistics, and use them they must quote the source from where they obtained the data from. They have to state what the importance of why they have collected the data, if it is either to support or persuade, has the information been already published in any newspapers or in any other ways of advertising to the readers. The reason why these entire questions have to be answers is because the statistics need to be treated with caution.
Another difficulty that might occur when measuring health is when you go two the doctors with symptoms, sometimes two different doctors will give the person different diagnoses from the other doctor. Sometimes people will go to the doctors saying they are experiencing different symptoms when really they just don’t want to go to work, when this happens it distorts the figures about the number of people with a specific kind of illness.
In 2006 where was a useful framework produced and provided to explain the problem of people to be labeled as sick and then to be recorded as a health statistic, the four stages involved are;
Stage one; individuals must first realise they have a problem
Stage two; then define their problem as serious enough to go to the doctor
Stage three; then go to the doctors
Stage four; the doctor must be persuaded that they have either have a medical or mental condition, in order for them to be labeled as ill and may require treatment
Official statistics that are on levels of illness are describes as the clinical iceberg, because the true levels of illness are largely concealed. The reasons for this is because a large range of people who are actually ill will not always visit the doctor or get the illness seen to.
In the same context the reasons for death which will be recorded on the death certificate, May not also be the accurate reason for them dying. They may just put down the reason for dying as an illness they might have had recently but in may in fact of been the ways in which they lived the life or how previous illness affected their life and the more recent illnesses. What I mean by this is that the person might have had a life threatening illness for years but also brought on or influences another illness, which might be the one the person will have on their death certificate. It is the doctors interpretation of what illness they dies from, and this will then depend on what is written on the death certificate. What sometimes the doctor will do is that they will record down the illness or condition that will cause less stress to the relatives of the decreases. This is why the statistics taken from death certificates have to be used with care and understand their limitations.
Gender
Women have a higher life expectancy then men; however there are studies that show levels are higher in women for them to have illnesses. The social factors that contribute to these differences are;
- Risk factors
- Economic inequalities
- Impact of the female role
In the risk factors the higher death rate for men can be linked with, the higher level of them smoking and drinking that they do. They also do more risky and dangerous activities and sports. There is a high risk of death rates in young men this is because of the risk taking they do.
With the economic inequalities it shows that women do earn less than men, even women that have degrees, are still paid on average less than men. Also men just leaving university are more likely to find full time, high paid jobs, straight away. Most women are in low paid part time work more than men. This is mainly because they are the lone carers for their family and have to live on state benefits, then if they don’t go to work at all, because of this these people are more likely to be in poverty when in their old age, and because of family responsibilities they might not even have a state pension.
Then we have the impact of the female role where women take responsibility for the housework, and there is a higher incidence of depression in women and this may be linked to the dull repetitive nature of the work they do being a house wife. Studies have found back in 1989 that women used to spend up to 87 hours a week doing housework, and women that either had children or a full time job still spent around 64 hours. These women also will have to be managing on a low limited budget, were they will be working long hours will no times to themselves. Although there might be a higher rate of diagnosed stress related illnesses in women because of how willing they are to discuss how they feel to their doctor.
Ethnicity
The link between someone’s race and illness is difficult to systematically study this is because of the difficulties in defining someone’s racial type, especially because of the higher numbers of mixed race people. The people who are in minor ethic groups live in the areas of deprivation in the city areas which are associated with poor housing, pollution, and high unemployment. In The white ethnic groups, it shows evidence that;
- There is higher incidence of rickets in children from the Asian continent because of the lack of vitamin D
- Most minority ethnic groups have shorter life expectancy
- Most minority ethnic groups have higher infant mortality rates
Language problems and other cultural barriers may limit someone being able to use the full use of the health service. Asian women because of their morals will not see a male doctor, and will mainly not speak good English, and many of the translators that we do have may not be available and are in short supply. If the health and social care worker does not fully understand someone’s religion, cultural beliefs and language of their ethnic group, the patients’ needs may not be fully met. This will mean they are left vulnerable and at high levels of ill health.
Age
People that are of the retirement age are mostly fit, healthy and making valuable contributions to our society through working, doing voluntary contributions or caring for their family members. Although there are higher levels of illness among the older population, especially people over the age of 75. One in five people over the age of 80 suffer from dementia.
Locality
Mortality and morbidity rates vary between different parts of the country and within towns and cities within the UK. In the poorer regions and poorer parts of different cities, higher levels of illness have been recorded. There are regional variations in patterns of health and illness.
Social class and patterns of health and illness
Statistics are treated with caution, although there is evidence to show that health, ill health and life expectancy vary according to social group and social class. The evidence shows that the people who are of a higher social class live longer and have better health through-out their years, in contrasts to the people of a lower social class. Findings have shown there are vast difference between health and illness between the two social classes. Researchers have been persuaded that the differences in health and well-being were an effect of the level of the people’s income. This would also include the quality of their housing and the environment where they live and work.
The four possible sociological explains were;
The statistical artifact explanation- in this explanation the researchers at the time were working on the black report, and they suggested the differences could be explains by the fact that the statistics themselves painted a biased picture. There was an argument to say the people in the lower social classes had a higher proportion of older people and also people working in traditional and dangerous environments. This is why they had higher levels of illness then the younger people working in service industries. So it had then been argued it wasn’t down to the social class but the age structure and the different patterns of employment of the people in the lower social class. Although more recent studies have shown that taking away the employment and age of both social classes there is still a link between the lower and higher class levels of health and ill health.
Natural and social selection- the natural and social explanation suggests that it is not the lower social class and their low wages, poverty and poorer housing that causes illness to adults but the other way round. This is people the people that have poor health; absenteeism and lack of energy which is needed for success and promotion are put in a lower social class for exactly those reasons. This explanation has been rejected by some sociologists because the evidence shows otherwise.
Cultural and behavioural explanation- this explanation is about the behaviour and lifestyle choices of people in lower social classes. Evidence has shown that people in lower social classes smoke more, drink more, are eat more junk food and don’t do enough exercise. This means their poor lifestyle choices impact on their illness, leading them to have more range of chronic illnesses. It is their difficult circumstances that lead them to make poorer lifestyle choices, and the choicest they make help them cope with the difficult circumstances.
Material or structural explanations
The material explanations claim that those social groups of the people where they have a lower life expectancy and where they have higher infant mortality rates will suffer from poorer health compared to other social groups because of their poor income. People in poverty and that have low incomes are associated with poor diets, poor housing, and who live in poor environments and have insecure employment. It is then these inequalities that lead to the difference in health and well-being in different people.
In this assignment I have explained the patterns and trends in health and illness among different social groupings and in this I have included how health is measured, the difficulties when measuring health and also explained the sociological explanations.