Sociology of Mental Illness: Biomedical Model, Social Realism, and Role of Health Professionals

This essay discusses the impact of mental illness on society and the need for proper care and support. It explores the biomedical model and its measurement in mental health, as well as the sociological view of social realism and social construction. The essay also evaluates the sociological view on the role of health professionals in mental health, including the theoretical perspective through explaining the role of psychiatric profession.

Sociology of mental illness

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
Mental illness refers to the mental health disorder which can create high impact on
individual life and their behaviour and can affect individual mood, behaviour and their thinking.
This may include anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, additive behaviour and eating disorder and
many more. There is high impact of mental illness on society perspective which may include
different societal reaction. There is need to ensure about proper delivery of care, medication
along with proper support. This may impact any individual either young adult, child, new born
baby or any pregnant lady. In this, there is need to ensure about better care and support that can
allow to deliver effective care to them. In this essay, there is discussion about the biomedical
model and their measurement in mental health. There is also discussion about the sociological
view of social realism along with social construction (Frankham, 2018). There is also evaluation
of sociological view on role of health professional in mental health. This also includes the
theoretical perspective through explaining the role of psychiatric profession.
MAIN BODY
Mental illness refers to the illness which are related with the health condition that are
involved in the changes in the emotion, behaviour and thinking. It can have related with the
distress and problem functioning within social, family and work activities. In this, there is need
to about the mental illness to delivery proper care and support and medication accordingly
(Livingston and et. al., 2018). There is various diagnosis of mental illness which are effective
and can help in determines which can be done through interviewing and related with history of
symptoms. In this, there is need to perform some medical tests to ensure about the physical
elements which are not effective to evaluate the mental health. DSM is an effective diagnosis
which can allow to get better diagnosis for the mental illness. This can ensure about the
conceptualized as psychological syndrome along with pattern which can occur in individual for
associated with present distress. DSM-III and DSM-IV are having seminal contribution which
can be effective in psychiatric disorder and are effective in major depressive disorder along with
social phobia (Gershkovich and et. al., 2018).
Biomedical model refers to the surrogate for human being which can be used to
understand the abnormal and normal function of human biologic system that are effective to
understand the normal and abnormal function to provide basis preventive or therapeutic

intervention in human disease. This is the model in which body work as machine and can help in
fixed by medical doctor which include the mind distinction. In this, mind and body are the
separate entity which should not interrelate and state of health is absence in definable illness.
This can be measure through getting the condition of mental illness and ensure about getting
effect by targeting presumed biological abnormalities (Wang and et. al., 2021). It can also be
measure through the demographic details, health history and psychologist attendance which are
effective to measure the bio-medical model in mental health within individual that may be child
or adult. It can also be measure through sing and symptoms and the medical examination and
tests. This can include the pharmacological treatment and with targeting the presumed biological
abnormalities in brain disorder or mental disorder. Here, it is essential to ensure about the mental
health care and support that can allow to deliver better treatment to mental illness.
Sociological view refers to the perspective which are observed through the unbiased lens
and without any personal opinions. This is the one through which individual are observed
regarding any society issue like depression, eating disorder and other mental illness which are
affecting large number of population (Mueller, 2019). This can have related with the societal
problem which should be taken in consideration to allow better and effective response towards
this. Social realism refers to use of the theory or practices which can use the appropriate
representing along with symbolling in order to express the social or political attitude. Social
realism includes the practice of using art that are effectively highlight the social and political
issues. This also includes the injustice, poverty and corruption within society that are impacting
large number population. Sociological view of social realism allows to create awareness and help
in understanding to draw the attention towards the socio-political condition within working class.
There are various mental illness issues which can includes depression, eating disorder, anxiety
and many more (Van, 2018). Through social realism, it can draw attention toward the impact of
mental illness which can impact different situation that are effective and allow to get better
impact on the services that can allow to get better and effective mental health. There are many
perspectives to draw attention towards the mental illness which is having high impact on the
society that can lead to create impact through creating awareness and drawing attention through
using painting, printing, writing and filmmaking (Cornwell and et. al., 2019). Through this,
individual is able to create high impact on the societal issue which should be resolved to make
society more effective to improve quality of life. There is perspective to draw attention towards

the declining health of large population which lead to create impact people mental illness to get
better mental health. Through using this theory, it allow to ensure about mental health which
allow to take care and support people with mental health.
Social construction refers to an idea which has been created along with accepted by
people within society class distinctions. It is the one which are not exists naturally but are having
the reality that can relates to objective reality that are the result of human interaction. This one
exists due to human interaction. There are many mental illnesses which are cause due to human
interaction and some are also not the social construct which means there is no any human
interference (Hoddy, 2019). This many include schizophrenia along with manic depression. In
this, there are also some of the mental health issue which are caused due to the human
interference like depression which can be both social construct and biological construct. Due to
many reason people get mental illness either due to bullying, making environment that can lead
to cause mental illness or disorder are the socially constructed and having human interference
(Proffitt, 2020). This create significant impact on the social environment and cause disturbance
in being well.
There is some difference in the social realism and social construct where sociology have
some view that allow to get better interaction in getting different mental illness which are
effective and allow to get better interaction in society to achieve good quality of life. Social
realism draw attention towards the society issue which includes society and social construct is
about response of human interference that lead to cause mental illness within individual.
There is different theoretical perspective that may include functionalist perspective, symbolic
interactionist and conflict perspective. Functionalist perspective that society includes the
complex system which can contribute towards the solidarity along with stability. This includes
the role of medical professional to include the delivery of their service towards mental illness
within society through namely norm, institution (Valdivielso and et. al., 2019). This shape
society as a whole through social structures and have focus on the macro level orientation. This
includes the role of medical professional who play their role in making society more effective
through delivering their service to provide better orientation to the society and people to get
better and effective quality of life through providing counselling and medication (Clarke, 2020).
Functionalism refers to the theory which include the nature of mental states. This includes the
behaviour and traditional ideas which can be effective to enable individual for internal states of

thinking. There is various role of psychiatric professional in which through using the
functionalism perspective it allows to take care about the delivery of mental health services to
patient to improve their health. Their role is to provides stability within sick to fulfil their normal
societal roles and help in getting well to achieve better quality of life. Here, psychiatric
professional has the role to provide their service in effective way to improve mental illness of
individual to attain good quality of life to maintain stability in contributing to society for better
development. In this, psychiatric professional should take care about the diagnosis and treatment
for the mental issues. they should also provide medication, psychotherapy and neuro-modulation
and others (Soltanpour and et. al., 2019).
CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it can have concluded that there are many populations who
are facing mental illness which should be taken in consideration for getting better impact on
society to improve health and quality of life. This may include different model that includes bio-
medical model that allow to measure mental illness and focus in human judgement. In this essay,
there is discussion about the evaluation of sociology views related with social realism along with
social construction. There is also discussion about the sociological view of role of medical
professionals regarding mental illness. This essay also has discussion about the role of
functionalism through applying in role of psychiatric professional.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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