I’ve read all your posts and am impressed by the wide range of topics discussed. I also like the curiosity expressed and the itch to question and explore ways of understanding the different health issues commented upon. I thought I would try to highlight some points which can be identified across the posts.
Culture, understandably comes across strongly across the posts. The issues described highlight social health behaviours on different levels, for example, of lay people, patients and doctors. What is considered an illness may vary across cultures. I would include medicine as a cultural group in this regard.
Cross-cultural differences are referred to, both within and between different countries. Issues for research and discussion are raised, e.g. around lay and professional diagnoses of depression and hypertension, and also their management. We often become more aware of the taken for granted social norms of our own culture when we live in another, or hear about another. I think we will all learn a lot about our own culture and that of others over the course of this series of seminars.
Stigma and labelling and their implications are highlighted. It is clear that they can have a major impact on both the prevalence and experience of disease. Related to this patients and lay people may resist medical labels and treatment regimens though not explicitly. They may act one way in a doctor-patient consultation but act differently at home. On a broad social level stigma contributes to the marginalisation of people with diseases like HIV/AIDS and also further marginalising and stigmatising of social groups associated with high levels of HIV. This increases people’s fear of being stigmatised (what Scambler refers to as ‘felt stigma’ or ‘anticipated stigma’) which makes people less willing to come forward for screening and treatment. This is an issue in the UK but it sounds more extreme in some other countries.
Culture is not fixed as the posts about self-harm and alcohol highlight, it shifts and evolves and we need to consider what it means for health providers. Concerns were raised about the health effects of social activities on young people. Certain activities may be acceptable or even desirable within certain cultural groups e.g. self-harm, drinking alcohol. This also highlights the relationship between the individual and the group. Health providers generally work with individuals but the social group may have a big impact on people’s uptake of medical advice. Identity, as a social construct, is an important concept in medical sociology and may be linked to people self-harming and drinking alcohol. We will look at the relationship between identity and illness further in lecture 3.
How do you set about studying health topics in terms of their social and cultural nature and contexts? I hear some mention of how qualitative methods may complement quantitative studies. This will indeed be taken forward in the lectures in the coming weeks.
