Medicalization of Death

Running head: MEDICALIZATION OF DEATH
MEDICALIZATION OF DEATH
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MEDICALIZATION OF DEATH
Medicalisation is the procedure by which any human issues and conditions becomes
defined and treated as the medical conditions and thereby is considered to be the subject of
medical study, diagnosis, prevention as well as treatment. Studies have shown that
Medicalisation is driven by new hypotheses and evidences about conditions mainly by the
changing of the social attitudes and economic considerations or by the developing new
medications (van et al. 2016). Medicalisation is therefore seen to be studied from sociological
perspectives in terms of the power as well as the role of the professionals, corporations and
even patients and for its implications for the ordinary people because of their self-identity and
life, decisions might be depending on the prevailing concept of health and illness (Browne et
al. 2017). Medicalisation is also referred as pathologization by several studies. A good
number of studies have argued Medicalisation as the benefitting attribute to the human
society (Browne et al. 2017; Tradii and Robert 2017; Goossensen 2016) This is because
Medicalisation is the social process through which a condition becomes a medical disorder in
requirement of treatments. This assignment will discuss about the various aspects associated
as the Medicalisation of death in the western society and shed light on the sociological
perspective.
According to Smith (2018), Medicalisation of death can be explained as the form of
medical treatment that is seen to be concentrating on the reduction of the pain and suffering
of the people. It never tries to delay or speed up the progression of death. It is nowadays
considered to be a part of the hospice care or the palliative care. One of the studies have seen
to critique the Medicalisation of death as the loss of capacity of the present day healthcare
industry (Tradii and Robert 2017). They declined to accept the normal birth death cycle and
intervene to change its actual timing in the life of the affected patients. Secondly, the
researchers have also witnessed being the compitition against the components of death at
each and every life stage. Third, Medicalisation of death comprises of a crippling if family as

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MEDICALIZATION OF DEATH
well as personal care and results in devaluing of the different types of traditional rituals that
surround death and dying techniques. van Wijngaarden, Leget and Goossensen (2016) have
criticised Medicalisation of death as the form of social control in which a form of rejection of
the “patient hood” is witnessed by dying of the bereaved people which is labelled as a form
of deviance.
Smith et al. (2018) stated that the gradual advancement of Medicalisation of death
can be well explained with the four specific forms of innovations that crept in the healthcare
industry. One of the shifts was seen to occur in the study of dying individual’s care from the
concept of idiosyncratic anecdote to that of systemic observation and research. At that time,
leading journal articles and researchers working on healthcare topics were trying to suggest
different methods by which terminal care is promoted and several contrasting point of view
for euthanasia could be encountered.
Fleming et al. (2016) described the other aspect that also marked the acceptance of
Medicalisation of the death and he stated that a passive approach was replaced by the active
approach towards the care of the dying people. Here, the fatalistic resignation of the
healthcare professionals (who uttered the common phrase of “there is nothing more that can
be done from our side”) was replaced and thereby supplanted by the determination of finding
new as well as imaginative methods to continue caring up to the end of life. Another aspect
that was also noticed by Donato (2016) was the enhncing gratitude of the interdependency of
the physical and mental distress and this had resulted in creation of a more personified notion
of suffering. This had resulted in constituting several challenges to the body and mind
dualism on which high amount of medical practice was predicted. This had resulted in
development of the concept of hospice care, home care as well as day care services. Hospital
units, support teams started to be arranged and recruited accordingly, and all aspects were