ORCID Profile
0000-0002-9293-5297
Current Organisation
University of Brighton
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Publisher: Elsevier BV
Date: 03-2006
DOI: 10.1016/J.SOCSCIMED.2005.07.027
Abstract: Health professionals face a tension between focusing on the in idual and attending to health issues for the population as a whole. This tension is intrinsic to medicine and gives rise to medical uncertainty, which here is explored through accounts of three medical interventions focused on women at midlife: breast screening, hormone replacement therapy and bone densitometry. The accounts come from interviews with UK health professionals using these medical interventions in their daily work. Drawing on the analysis of Fox [(2002). Health and Healing: The public rivate ide (pp. 236-253). London: Routledge] we distinguish three aspects of medical uncertainty and explore each one of them in relation to one of the interventions. First is uncertainty about the balance between the in idual and distributive ethic of medicine, explored in relation to breast screening. Second is the dilemma faced by health professionals when using medical evidence generated through studies of populations and applying this to in iduals. We explore this dilemma for hormone replacement therapy. Thirdly there is uncertainty because of the lack of a conceptual framework for understanding how new micro knowledge, such as human genetic information, can be combined with knowledge of other biological and social dimensions of health. The accounts from the bone denistometry clinic indicate the beginnings of an understanding of the need for such a framework, which would acknowledge complexity, recognising that factors from many different levels of analysis, from heredity through to social factors, interact with each other and influence the in idual and their health. However, our analysis suggests biomedicine continues to be dominated by an in idualised, context free, concept of health and health risk with in iduals alone responsible for their own health and for the health of the population. This may continue to dominate how we perceive responsibilities for health until we establish a conceptual framework that recognises the complex interaction of many factors at macro and micro level affecting health.
Publisher: Wiley
Date: 16-08-2013
DOI: 10.1111/J.1467-9566.2012.01486.X
Abstract: The diagnosis of depression in the clinical context is extremely controversial and is subject to criticism of over-medicalisation and pharmaceuticalisation. Depression can be conceptualised across the entire spectrum of lay and medical belief, from the 'normal' highs and lows of the human condition to its inclusion in the dominant Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders classificatory system, as a form of serious mental illness. In this context, a better understanding of how people describe, experience, negotiate and participate in the process of diagnosis is needed. This article draws on qualitative interviews to explore lay accounts of being diagnosed with depression. The findings reveal that lay accounts of depression vacillate in and out of the medicalised discourse of depression, highlighting the limitations of the biomedical approach to diagnosis and treatment.
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Date: 25-10-2010
Abstract: Women’s perspectives on breast screening (mammography and breast awareness) were explored in interviews with midlife women s led for ersity of background and health experience. Attending mammography screening was considered a social obligation despite women’s fears and experiences of discomfort. Women gave considerable legitimacy to mammography visualizations of the breast, and the expert interpretation of these. In comparison, women lacked confidence in breast awareness practices, directly comparing their sensory capabilities with those of the mammogram, although mammography screening did not substitute breast awareness in a straightforward way. The authors argue that reliance on visualizing technology may create a fragmented sense of the body, separating the at risk breast from embodied experience.
Location: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
No related grants have been discovered for Gillian Bendelow.