This paper uses the domain of breastfeeding in the U.S. and the work of International Board Certified Lactation Consultants to refine the concept of medicalization-demedicalization. Given lactation consultants' origins and current role in maternity care, they provide a unique lens on these processes because they are positioned at the crossroads of medicalization and demedicalization. Using 150 ...

The purpose of this article is to inform emerging theoretical understanding of medicalization by challenging, updating, and affirming a previously published essay on this topic by Hall. We accomplished this through the creation of a discourse among the 3 authors using the essay, written entirely from a personal perspective, and integrated our own personal experiences as nurses and patients. Hal...

This article discusses the relation between sheltering practice and social medicalization in the primary care. It begins with a revision about social medicalization and mentions some influences concerning the organization of the Brazilian primary care. It also indicates that the ground of receptivity proposal was provided by those influences. It argues the potentiality to accomplish the shelter...

The emerging concept of systems medicine (or 'P4 medicine'-predictive, preventive, personalized and participatory) is at the vanguard of the post-genomic movement towards 'precision medicine'. It is the medical application of systems biology, the biological study of wholes. Of particular interest, P4 systems medicine is currently promised as a revolutionary new biomedical approach that is holis...

This paper examines the impact of changes in the medical marketplace on medicalization in U.S. society. Using four cases (Viagra, Paxil, human growth hormone and in vitro fertilization), we focus on two aspects of the changing medical marketplace: the role of direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs and the emergence of private medical markets. We demonstrate how consumers and pharm...

In recent decades, an ever-increasing cluster of phenomena has attracted the attention of social scientists and historians of medicine: processes of medicalization. As in other regions, Latin America has been affected by these phenomena. This article surveys recent literature involving sociological studies of these processes in the region, in order to provide an overview of the issue. It explor...

A funny thing happened on the way to theorizing medicalization: men’s bodies were ignored. This seems a startling statement, given the sheer number of articles and books written on the medicalization of—well, everything, it would appear. But with the exception of a few scattered but important pieces (see Ehrenreich 1983; Tiefer 1994; Potts 2000; Riska 2002, 2004; Mumford 1997), most of which ar...

This article explores the evolution of definition and process medicalization sexuality during second half 20th century. After a review discussion notion medicalization, application this to few examples is discussed, including emergence sexuality, demedicalization homosexuality, treatment “sexual disorders”, prevention HIV infection, gender-affirmation pathways for transgender gender diverse (TG...

The concept of medicalization is hugely influential, and empirical studies have demonstrated that medicalization has largely been achieved not only through the work of medical professionals or scientists but also increasingly through the efforts of patients or citizens seeking to legitimize their distress through defining it as a “medical” problem. In this article, I argue that the concept of m...