Medicalizing Grief

(Re)medicalizing the Male Menopause

This article analyzes the contemporary construction of male menopause as a clinical disorder. While medical interest in a male climacteric has waxed and waned over the past century, the past decade has witnessed a surge of both scientific and commercial interest in its diagnosis and treatment. In explaining why this is the case, the author suggests that shifting cultural narratives of aging and...

The hazards of medicalizing variants of normal.

Elsewhere in this issue of Pediatrics there appears an important article pointing to the hazards of using a disease label to describe a common, usually normal physiologic variant, regurgitation in small infants: “Influence of “GERD” Label on Parents’ Decision to Medicate Infants with Excessive Crying and Reflux” by Scherer et al. The authors’ concern is that acid-reducing medications are being ...

Grief, interrupted.

Internship presented me with countless opportunities to worry. The spectrum of concern varied widely, but rest assured there was always something for me to lose sleep about. Looking back, it was often a rather simple question, involving medication doses or routes of administration, but to a newly minted medical graduate everything feels substantial. Of all the dilemmas I faced though, these med...

Stemming needless deaths: "medicalizing" the problem of injection drug use.

Economic components of grief.

This article investigates the nature, context, and impact of economic stressors associated with loss, drawing on a mixed-methods study of changes in financial circumstances and economic roles following death of a life partner. Findings show how economic changes, and the practicalities of dealing with such transitions, shaped individual responses to the death. Perceived decline in financial well...