Medicalization of Death

This assignment discusses the concept of medicalization of death from a sociological perspective. It explores the various aspects associated with the medicalization of death in the western society and sheds light on its implications for individuals and society.

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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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

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designed for bringing the new concept and thinking about death and dying into the heartlands
of acute care medications.
On the other hand, Arnason (2017) described the huge amount of negative aspects that
he found to be intricately associated with the concept of the Medicalisation and
commodization of death. Yet although palliative care had effectively encouraged medications
to be towards the gentler sides in their acceptance towards death and parallel developments in
the medical systems had doubled efforts on the contradictory direction. When it comes to the
negative aspects of this, it includes the issues of the futile treatments that either produces and
effect which has no benefitting outcomes on the patient or have a very low chance of having
an effect on the patient’s health. Some of the other thoughts that have turned out to be a
negative aspect of the Medicalisation of the death is that every death could be resisted,
avoided or even postponed.
One of the article by Tradii and Robert (2017) also gave a good insight about the
effects of Medicalisation of death on the healthcare industry. In the UK, about 25 percent of
the occupied healthcare home bed days were seen to be occupied by the healthcare service
users who were in their last years of life and about sixty percent of their deaths occur there.
37 percent of the healthcare service users who had been admitted to the United Kingdom
intensive care units are seen to be dying within the six months and the bill was estimated to
be increasing by five percent annually. One of the researcher Greenwood (2015) had stated
that the modern epidemic of multiple organ failure overheads twice as much to death within
the intensive care as it does in surviving outside. Hence, it shows that Medicalisation of death
is seen to be associated with huge expenditure of healthcare resources in the western nations
resulting in strenuous effects on the funding systems.

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From the above articles, many important points can be jotted into a summary to
understand the whole picture of medicalisation of death. The initial decade before
medicalisation of death, the concept of death was rather different than it is today. Throughout
the world, death as well as different rituals surrounding them was steeped in taboos. Death
was celebrated, embraced and feared in the earlier centuries. Different types of cultures used
to put different types of diverse restrictions and practices associated with clothing, rituals and
food when they used to consider the concepts of death and dying procedures (MacArtney et
al., 2016). Death, dying and grieving in the proper traditional model possessed an important
part of the everyday cultural practicesTherefore, the ordeal of dying was never just personal
but was also considered to be communal.
The concept of dying is now deeply feared and therefore a new image had replaced
the acceptance in traditional pattern. Specifically, it had lead to the widespread pretence that
suffering, death; dying and grief do not exist. Technological achievement as well as
dependence on the technologies has enabled the healthcare industry in actively fighting
against dying. This had lead to forestalling death for the countless numbers of individuals
(Lam et al. 2016). In the technological framework, death is no longer considered natural,
necessary and as a significance part of life. The present concept was considering that success
lies controlling and defeating death and the failure to do that is defined as the inability of the
healthcare industry. These social changes have thereby resulted in rising to a new model for
death. Here, dying and grieving is anatomised and even disconnected from daily life resulting
in social isolation. Medicalisation of death had resulted in society and humanity losing the
capacity for accepting death and suffering as the meaningful aspects of life always being a in
the state of “total war” against death at all stages of the life cycle.
Medicalisation and commoditization of death has caused people to want to die at
home but they mainly die in the hospitals. Árnason 2017 stated that commoditization of

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death poses a never ending threat in the medical industry. This concept also supports the fact
that everybody must be having at least provided his or her chance in the intensive care before
being allowed to die. Researchers are of the opinion that palliative care started as a response
for medicalisation of death but now had become a part of the medicalisation of death
(Bregman 2017). Now modern western culture wants death to be pain free. They also believe
in the open acknowledgement of the imminence of death. The society also wants death at
home and advises people to be surrounded by family as well as friends. Now, death needs to
be modified according to personal preferences and in ways that resonate with the
individuality of the person.
Medicalisation and commoditization of death are associated with negative points as it
devalues and destroys non-medical traditional procedures of managing difficulties. Many
treatments are there which have potential side effects. It has been also found huge amount of
healthcare resources are being spent on the certain critical disorders that have fewer scopes to
provide better quality lives (Leonard et al., 2017).
From the above discussion, it has been found that medicalisation and commoditization
of death where death is no more concerned a natural aspect of life and is considered to be a
medical problem. Therefore, course of death is often tried to be controlled and managed as
the present day society visualises death as something that needs to be avoided. It had resulted
in huge economic outflow in every western nation and had affected cultural traditions of
different societies over years.
References:
Árnason, A., 2017. Death as resource: a story of organ donation and communication across
the ‘great mist’in Iceland. Medicine Anthropology Theory, pp.23-45.

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Bregman, L., 2017. Dying in Five Stages: Death and Emotions in Kübler-Ross and Her
Influence. Pakistan Journal of Historical Studies, 2(2), pp.33-61.
Browne, J., Reeves, M. and Beca, J.P., 2017. End of Life in Chile: What Can We Learn from
Death Cafes. Hos Pal Med Int Jnl, 1(4), p.00019.
Donato, M.P., 2016. Sudden death: Medicine and religion in eighteenth-century Rome.
Routledge, pp. 12-15.
Fleming, J., Farquhar, M., Brayne, C., Barclay, S. and Cambridge City over-75s Cohort
(CC75C) study collaboration, 2016. Death and the oldest old: attitudes and preferences for
end-of-life care-qualitative research within a population-based cohort study. PloS one, 11(4),
p.e0150686.
Greenwood, S., 2015. Discussing death matters. Dynamics of Human Health (DHH), 2(4).
Lam, V., Kain, N., Joynt, C. and van Manen, M.A., 2016. A descriptive report of end-of-life
care practices occurring in two neonatal intensive care units. Palliative medicine, 30(10),
pp.971-978.
Leonard, R., Horsfall, D., Noonan, K. and Rosenberg, J., 2017. Identity and the end‐of‐life
story: A role for psychologists. Australian Psychologist, 52(5), pp.346-353.
MacArtney, J.I., Broom, A., Kirby, E., Good, P., Wootton, J. and Adams, J., 2016. Locating
care at the end of life: burden, vulnerability, and the practical accomplishment of
dying. Sociology of health & illness, 38(3), pp.479-492.
Smith, R., Blazeby, J., Bleakley, T., Clark, J., Cong, Y., Durie, R., Finkelstein, E., Gafer, N.,
Gugliani, S., Horton, R. and Johnson, M., 2018. Lancet Commission on the Value of
Death. The Lancet, 392(10155), pp.1291-1293.

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Tradii, L. and Robert, M., 2017. Do we deny death? II. Critiques of the death-denial
thesis. Mortality, pp.1-12.
van Wijngaarden, E., Leget, C. and Goossensen, A., 2016. Disconnectedness from the here-
and-now: a phenomenological perspective as a counteract on the medicalisation of death
wishes in elderly people. Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy, 19(2), pp.265-273.