Saturday 14th August 2001: Today has been a horrible, hateful day. Daniel has pushed me to my absolute wits' end. Sometimes it really does feel like he is the original child from hell."
For Alison, life with her son Daniel sometimes seemed like an endless torrent of disobedience, backchat, rudeness, ......
An introduction to medical sociology and an assessment of its significance for social theory and the social sciences. The author considers the ways in which different social theorists have interpreted the experience of health and disease, and the social relations and power structures involved in medical practice. The text examines health as an aspect of social action, and looks at the problem of health at three levels - the individual, the social and the societal. Among the perspectives analyzed are Parson's view of the "sick role" and the patient's relation to society; Foucault's critique of medical models of madness and sexuality; and Marxist and feminist debates on the contribution of Beck to the sociological understanding of environmental pollution and hazard in the politics of health. This new edition includes a revised chapter on mental health and new chapters on the sociology of the body and on the relationship between health and risk in contemporary societies.
This work is an assessment of, and a contribution to, the development of a sociology of medical knowledge - including the construction of medical opinion, the fabric of medical discourse and the medical construction of the body. Extensive research on the work of haematologists is used to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the existing understanding of medical knowledge. Topics covered include: the place of interaction among doctors, rather than between doctors and patients, in defining the construction of medical knowledge; the ways in which clinical opinion is socially produced and the nature of the local settings in which this process occurs; and the relations between medical knowledge, medical language, and the increasingly technological contexts of contemporary medical practice.
`This book is a "must read" for all students of health psychology, and will be of considerable interest and value to others interested in the field. The discipline has not involved itself with the central issues of this book so far, but Radley has now brought this material together in an accessible way, offering important new perspectives, and directions for the discipline. This book goes a long way towards making sense for, and of, health psychology' - Journal of Health Psychology What are people's beliefs about health? What do they do when they feel ill? Why do they go to the doctor? How do they live with chronic disease? This introduction to the social psychology of health and illness addresses these and other questions about how people make sense of illness in everyday life, either alone or with the help of others. Alan Radley reviews findings from medical sociology, health psychology and medical anthropology to demonstrate the relevance of social and psychological explanations to questions about disease and its treatment. Topics covered include: illness, the patient and society; ideas about health and staying healthy; recognizing symptoms and falling ill; and the healing relationship: patients, nurses and doctors. The author also presents a critical account of related issues - stress, health promotion and gender differences.
Quantile Regression establishes the seldom recognized link between inequality studies and quantile regression models. Though separate methodological literatures exist for each subject matter, the authors explore the natural connections between this increasingly sought-after tool and research topics in the social sciences.
`This book is a "must read" for all students of health psychology, and will be of considerable interest and value to others interested in the field. The discipline has not involved itself with the central issues of this book so far, but Radley has now brought this material together in an accessible way, offering important new perspectives, and directions for the discipline. This book goes a long way towards making sense for, and of, health psychology' - Journal of Health Psychology What are people's beliefs about health? What do they do when they feel ill? Why do they go to the doctor? How do they live with chronic disease? This introduction to the social psychology of health and illness addresses these and other questions about how people make sense of illness in everyday life, either alone or with the help of others. Alan Radley reviews findings from medical sociology, health psychology and medical anthropology to demonstrate the relevance of social and psychological explanations to questions about disease and its treatment. Topics covered include: illness, the patient and society; ideas about health and staying healthy; recognizing symptoms and falling ill; and the healing relationship: patients, nurses and doctors. The author also presents a critical account of related issues - stress, health promotion and gender differences.
Helps you make decisions about your healthcare in respect to quality of care and affordability. This book offers knowledge on 10 areas: evaluating physicians, finding good dental care, traditional private health insurance, managed care, Medicaid and Medicare, surgery, hospital stays, nursing homes, home and hospice care, and prescription drugs.
This work is an assessment of, and a contribution to, the development of a sociology of medical knowledge - including the construction of medical opinion, the fabric of medical discourse and the medical construction of the body. Extensive research on the work of haematologists is used to demonstrate the strengths and weaknesses of the existing understanding of medical knowledge. Topics covered include: the place of interaction among doctors, rather than between doctors and patients, in defining the construction of medical knowledge; the ways in which clinical opinion is socially produced and the nature of the local settings in which this process occurs; and the relations between medical knowledge, medical language, and the increasingly technological contexts of contemporary medical practice.
By highlighting the commonalities across a range of disciplines, this volume provides a unique and broad-based perspective on communication and ageing. This integrative approach brings together the best of current research and theory from communication, cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics and medical sociology. Centring on three topics - cognition, language and relationships - the book explores the individual areas as well as the ways in which they intersect. It brings to light the implications of individual differences among members of the elderly population as they affect communication, and illustrates the positive as well as the negative effects of the ageing process on language production, relational satisfaction and other communication-related variables.
