Communicating male sexual dysfunction: The medicalization and psychologization of sexual experiences in Chinese online medical consultations.

Previous research shows that men who experience erectile or sexual dysfunction may feel uncomfortable discussing their sexual experiences in face-to-face clinical encounters. Part of the reason is the stigma and embarrassment associated with discussing private sexual matters. This study examines how e-patients, or more precisely advice-seekers, and doctors communicate about sexual dysfunction in online medical consultations (OMCs). We conducted a Theme-Oriented Discourse Analysis of relevant OMCs on CH Doctor, a Chinese medical consultation website, to understand how individuals with perceived sexual dysfunction articulate their conditions and how doctors on the platform respond and provide recommendations to these individuals. Our analysis reveals that OMCs afford advice-seekers a place to openly discuss their sexual health issues and gain empowerment from doctors who assist in mitigating the associated social stigma. Upon detailed discourse analysis, however, we find that individuals seeking advice often interpret their sexual experiences as symptoms of illness that requires medical intervention. In response, doctors tend to validate these advice-seekers' preliminary self-diagnoses by treating their conditions as medical issues and characterizing them as psychosocial problems caused by stress and anxiety. Aligning with a critical sociological perspective that views sexual dysfunction as socially constructed problems referenced against dominant norms of sexual functioning, we argue that the medicalization and psychologization of certain sexual behaviors by doctors and advice-seekers discursively reinforce and legitimize essentialist views of hetero-coital sexual interaction. Such views reify penile-vaginal intercourse and ejaculation as the only standard, successful, and desirable form of sexual activity. This may further induce fear and anxiety among adult men whose sexual behaviors do not realistically align with these norms.

Medicalization of Old Age: Experiencing Healthism and Overdiagnosis in a Nordic Welfare State.

In Denmark, people are expected to take responsibility for their health, not least as their bodies age and they experience signs of physical or mental decline. Drawing on fieldwork among older Danes, I illustrate that an excessive focus on health gives rise to social and structural controversies and disparities, linking ideas of healthy behavior at the individual level with the societal framing of disease and aging. I argue that this emphasis contributes to the unwarranted diagnosis of bodily variations that naturally occur in the aging process, a phenomenon referred to as overdiagnosis, adding to a broader medicalization of old age.

The biomedicalization of pregnancy prevention, neoliberal feminism, and college women's experiences of the contraceptive paradox.

Research examining the "contraceptive paradox" has illuminated how contraception can be a source of empowerment for some and oppression for others. This study advances theorizing of the contraceptive paradox by illustrating how 45 young women experience contraception as both liberating and constraining due to a confluence of biomedicalization processes, gender inequality, and neoliberal feminism. Drawing on focus group data, we find that the biomedicalization of pregnancy prevention and neoliberal feminist discourse, in combination with experiences of social and economic privilege and gender inequality in fertility work, shape participants' interpretation of contraceptive technology as a key resource for individually liberating themselves from undesired pregnancy. At the same time, their experiences indicate prescription contraception plays an oppressive role in their lives. In addition to blaming themselves and their bodies for negative contraceptive side effects, participants take for granted that assuming sole responsibility for contraceptive use in their relationships with men is the price they must pay to feel free. The findings indicate that addressing a social problem using an individualized biomedical solution obscures the power that structural inequalities exert over pregnancy-capable people, including relatively privileged young women. As an expression of biopower, these dynamics prompted participants to emphasize distributive justice over social justice, foreclosing their engagement in collective action.

Resisting the (re-)medicalisation of dying and grief in the post-digital age: Natural language processing and qualitative analysis of data from internet support forums.

In the mid-twentieth century, the social movement of death revivalism sought to resist the medicalisation of dying and grief through promotion of the dying person retaining autonomy, and societal openness toward death and bereavement. Despite this advocacy, present-day dying in high income countries is largely institutionalised, with value placed on control over the body and emotions. These phenomena are at odds with the ambitions of death revivalism, and demonstrate the re-medicalisation of dying and grief. Furthermore, contemporary society is continually advancing into the post-digital age, reflected in digital technologies being a tacit part of human existence. Within this framework, this study aims to investigate how people living with life-limiting illness and their loved ones experience, negotiate, and resist medicalisation of dying and grief through online internet forums. We collected posts through web-scraping and utilised Natural Language Processing techniques to select 7048 forum posts from 2003 to 2020, and initially categorise data, before utilising Inductive Thematic Analysis, which generated two major themes. The theme of 'Comfort' describes online forums facilitating psychosocial support which was often used to compensate for systemic deficiencies, especially during the Covid-19 pandemic. Common sources of comfort included animal companions and spirituality, in stark contrast with the medicalised model. The theme of 'Capability' describes online forums acting as solutions for people facing disempowering care systems, including providing information on legal rights and benefits which may not be otherwise easily available, and facilitating collective advocacy. Our findings indicate that community-led online forums can play an effective and sustainable role in democratising care and retaining agency when facing life-limiting illness and grief. Future palliative and bereavement care research must focus on how online forums can be integrated into existing systems, made transparent and accessible, be adequately funded and structured, and be optimised, including compensating for service disruption encountered during future pandemics.

Silent reflections remain unheard.

OBJECTIVE: To consider the contribution of non-clinical factors in the rising rate of mental health presentations and explore the associated silence within the psychiatric profession. CONCLUSION: Medicalisation, concept creep and group think, alongside societal demand and expectations, have collectively contributed toward a distorted view of mental health and illness. Equitable service provision has been hindered by the silence of important perspectives.

Are All Gay Men at Risk of Developing HIV/AIDS? Why China's Mass HIV Testing Has Majorly Targeted Gay Men in the Era of Biomedicalization.

Global HIV/AIDS responses have been increasingly biomedically dominated over the past years. In line with this shifting paradigm, China has prioritized mass HIV testing as a practical approach to controlling its HIV/AIDS epidemics among at-risk populations, especially gay men and other men who have sex with men (MSM). This study analyzed why China's mass HIV testing mainly targeted gay men by understanding the perspectives of public health professionals, community-based organization (CBO) workers, and gay men. In addition, this study revealed the tensions and unintended consequences of HIV/AIDS prevention and the representation of gay men in China. The study involved fieldwork conducted in a major city in Eastern China from 2015 to 2019. Semi-structured interviews were held with participants from the three abovementioned groups (N = 25). The study identified four processes concerning why gay men are mainly targeted for HIV testing. Some public health professionals believe that being a gay man is equivalent to having HIV/AIDS risks. In addition, this study particularly noted tensions between public health professionals and gay men, including gay men-identified CBO workers, over whether mass HIV testing should target gay men or anyone who engaged in sexual risk behaviors. This study argued that a particular focus on gay men due to pursuing biomedical advances in HIV/AIDS prevention seems to have unintendedly stereotyped gay men based on the presumptions that they are at risk of developing HIV/AIDS. In addition, this study corresponded to the broader social scientific discussion concerning whether HIV/AIDS intervention should target specific sexual risk practices or sexual identity/population.

[Franco Basaglia: the body and the corporality of the encounter.] / Franco Basaglia: il corpo e l'incontro con l'altro.

On the centenary of the birth of Franco Basaglia - Italian psychiatrist and neurologist - it is incumbent upon us to question the ways in which Basaglia can critically illuminate or help us interpret the social uncertainty in which we are living. Many important contributions have enriched our knowledge of Basaglia's work in recent months. He was a modern practical intellectual, in the Gramscian sense, where the authentic intellectual moves from the real needs of the masses and seeks their solution from the given historical situation, recomposing it in the more general course of the world. Basaglia addresses our society: Do we want to be "fair"? Do we not want to remain in barbarism? Then, in our project of democracy, there must be a place for madness. It is not enough to stop marginalizing the insane or those whom, in the language of medicalization, we call "mentally ill". We have to make room for it. We must "reload" Basaglia's work beginning with restoring value to the centrality of the encounter with the other and to the corporality of the encounter, two themes that guided Franco Basaglia throughout his life.

Resistance to the biomedicalization of mental illness through peer support: The case of peer specialists and mental health.

Certified peer specialists (CPS) are mental health professionals who draw their expertise from lived experience with mental illness and mental distress. They tale a nonmedical, nonclinical approach to providing support to community members with mental health difficulties and in doing so, emphasize the role of social environmental factors that contribute to mental distress. Their perspectives are contrary to the biomedical perspective of mainstream psychiatry. While there is a significant body of literature on CPS, there is a dearth of research on how CPS engage in and perceive the broader mental health system. They resist the biomedicalization of mental illness by moving past labels and the language of pathology to facilitate recovery from mental illness and to resist stigma. Drawing from in-depth interviews with peer specialists, participant observation of a peer-run organization, and a survey of peer specialists across the United States, I ask the following research questions: How and why are CPS challenging the medical model of mental illness? How do CPS consider social environmental factors in the etiology of distress and what are the potential implications for resistance to both biomedicalization and stigmatization? My data suggest that CPS, in their critiques of the medical model and the mental health system, are actively resisting the biomedicalization of mental illness and focus on social environmental factors that contribute to experiences of distress. This research has meaningful implications for research on CPS and hope for recovery from mental illness.

'I just need to know what they are and if you can help me': Medicalization and the search for legitimacy in people diagnosed with non-epileptic attack disorder.

This paper focuses on the struggles for legitimacy expressed by people with non-epileptic attack disorder (NEAD), one of the most common manifestations of functional neurological disorder presenting to emergency and secondary care services. Nonepileptic attacks are episodes of altered experience, awareness, and reduced self-control that superficially resemble epileptic seizures or other paroxysmal disorders but are not associated with physiological abnormalities sufficient to explain the semiological features. "Organic" or medicalized explanations are frequently sought by patients as the only legitimate explanation for symptoms, and consequently, a diagnosis of NEAD is often contested. Drawing on narrative interviews with patients from a small exploratory study and using a sociological perspective, we propose that a psychological account of NEAD does not provide a sufficiently legitimate path into a socially sanctioned sick role. This is a reflection of the dominance of biomedicine and the associated processes of medicalization. These processes are, we argue, the sole route to achieving legitimacy. The stress-based or psychologically oriented explanations offered to patients in contemporary medical models of the etiology of NEAD engender an uncertain identity and social position and fail to provide many patients with an account of the nature or origin of their symptoms that they find satisfactory or convincing. These struggles for legitimacy (shared by others with functional or somatoform conditions) are sharpened by key features of the contemporary healthcare landscape, such as the increasing framing of health through a lens of 'responsibilization'.

Disparities in the prevalence of ADHD diagnoses, suspicion, and medication use between Flanders and Québec from the lens of the medicalization process.

The prevalence of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) diagnoses and medication use has increased over time around the world, but significant regional differences remain. This paper aims to determine and explain disparities in ADHD prevalence and medication use among school-aged children in two distinct school systems, in Flanders (Belgium) and Québec (Canada). We present detailed descriptive and comparative analyses of data from 35 schools, 114 teachers, and 1046 parents (children) that were collected as part of a comparative international project. The data concern teacher and parent suspicions, teachers' ratings of ADHD-related behaviors in children, teachers' views of medication use, and teachers' beliefs about ADHD. The results show that, compared with Flanders, Québec had significantly more children diagnosed with ADHD and more frequent suspicions of ADHD in children by teachers and parents. We refer to the conceptual, institutional, and interactional levels of medicalization to interpret our findings and conclude that social and cultural readings of children's behaviors differ greatly between regions. Medicalization of children's behaviors is more common in Québec than in Flanders.

Experiência entre Educação, Ensino, Diferença e Território / Experience between Education, Teaching, Difference and Territory

A leitura dos textos que aqui se apresentam não segue um itinerário linear e único, iniciamos com o texto de Renata Sousa para o deslocar da centralidade de especialistas para a articulação do cuidado em saúde de modo compartilhado com profissionais da educação, inspiradas pelo viés da estrutura de trabalho delineada pelo matriciamento ou apoio matricial. Psicologia, saúde e educação: caminhos que se atravessam na produção de um cuidado compartilhado com o sujeito é um recorte da dissertação do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ensino/INFES/UFF, desenvolvida entre 2016 e 2018, cuja pesquisa aborda a questão da inclusão de crianças com autismo no ensino regular em uma cidade do interior do Estado do Rio de Janeiro, trazendo como foco principal o papel do psicólogo numa perspectiva de apoio junto aos mediadores escolares no processo ensino e aprendizagem. O psicólogo apoiador tenta se articular em diferentes territórios existenciais e tecer uma forma de atenção que não produza novos especialismos mas possa contribuir para a articulação de diferentes atores na construção de outros olhares. Neste recorte o resgate histórico nos dá a ver que a saúde que se faz no coletivo leva em conta a produção da subjetivi

Estado da arte sobre a produção científica nacional da medicalização do comportamento / State of the art research on the brazilian national scientific production of medicalization of behavior / Estado del arte sobre la producción científica de la medicalización del comportamiento

O presente trabalho apresenta uma pesquisa de estado da arte, de caráter quantitativo, que objetivou realizar o mapeamento das publicações científicas nacionais sobre o tema da medicalização do comportamento entre os anos 2000 e 2018. Neste levantamento, foram identificados os autores, seus respectivos estados, regiões e instituições de origem, número de publicações por ano, periódicos nos quais os artigos foram publicados e áreas de conhecimento desses periódicos, sujeitos-alvo das pesquisas, tipo de pesquisa e a ênfase da medicalização envolvida. Para isso, a base Periódico-CAPES ofereceu o material analítico, a partir da seguinte estratégia de busca: medicalização AND (comportament* OR desvio OR conduta OR transtorno OR sofrimento). A partir dos dados coletados, foram construídos gráficos com o fim de obter um panorama das investigações sobre o tema em questão. Os dados encontrados sinalizam, dentre outras coisas: o aumento do número de publicações a partir do ano de 2009; a concentração de autores nos estados das regiões Sudeste e Sul; a maior prevalência de publicações em revistas de Saúde Coletiva e Interdisciplinar; a predominância de pesquisa teórica relativamente aos estudos empíricos; a prevalência das mulheres como sujeito-alvo de quantidade importante de pesquisas sobre medicalização do comportamento. (AU)

This study presents quantitative state-of-the-art research aimed at mapping Brazilian scientific publications on the topic of medicalization of behaviors between the years 2000 and 2018. The research identified authors, their respec-tive states, regions, and institutions of origin, the number of publications per year, the journals in which the articles were published, the fields of knowledge of these journals, the target subjects of the research, the type of research, and the emphasis on the involved medicalization. Data from the Periodic Portal from CAPES provided the analytical material using the following search strategy: medicalization AND (behavior* OR deviation OR conduct OR disorder OR suffering). The collected data were used to create graphs in order to provide an overview of the research on the subject. The findings indicate, among other things: an increase in the number of publications since 2009; a concentration of authors in Brazilian states from the southeastern and southern regions; a higher prevalence of publications in journals related to Collective and Inter-disciplinary Health fields; a predominance of theoretical research compared to empirical studies; and a significant focus on women as the subject of research on medicalization of behaviors. (AU)

En el presente trabajo fue realizada una investigación cuantitativa del Estado del Arte que objetivó el mapeado de las publicaciones científicas sobre el tema de la medicalización del comportamiento, entre los años 2000 y 2018. En este levantamiento, fueron identificados los autores, sus respectivos estados, regiones e instituciones de origen, número de publicaciones por año, periódicos en los cuales los artículos fueron publicados y las áreas de conocimiento de estos periódicos, tema objetivo de las investigaciones, tipo de investigación y énfasis de la medicalización involucrada. Para ello, fue utilizado el Periódico-CAPES, aplicando los siguientes descriptores: medicalización AND (comportamient* OR desvío OR conducta OR trastorno OR sufrimiento). A partir de los datos colectados, fueron construidos gráficos con el fin de ofrecer un panorama de las investigaciones sobre el tema en cuestión. Los datos encontrados señalan, entre otras cosas: el aumento del número de publicaciones a partir del año de 2009; la concentración de los autores en los estados de las regiones del Sudeste y Sur; la mayor prevalencia de publicaciones en revistas de Salud Colectiva e Interdisciplinaria; la predominancia de la investigación teórica relativa a los estudios empíricos; la prevalencia de las mujeres como objeto de investi-gación de cantidad importante de investigaciones sobre la medicalización del comportamiento. (AU)

The dangerous trend of levothyroxine medicalization.

Thyroid hormone replacement is paramount in overt hypothyroidism; recently, however, thyroid hormone substitution is increasingly prescribed to patients with normal thyroid hormone levels. This forum article discusses the complex causes and the possible negative effects of overusing thyroid hormone replacement drugs.

Chapitre 14. Le nouveau droit de l'assistance médicale à la procréation. Entre démédicalisation et stigmatisation : les tâtonnements du principe d'égalité.

The law of bioethics of 2 August 2021 is readily presented as enforcing the “medically-assisted procreation (MAP) for everyone”. It is true that opening up the MAP to female couples and single women made the law depart from the former legal framework which was based on a strong medicalization of this assisted procreation. This shift seems to be justified by the legislator’s intent to ensure equal rights when it comes to parental projects. Nevertheless, this “new” MAP right keeps facing differences in the treatment of applicants based on their gender or sexual orientation.

Is non-medical use normal? Normalisation, medicalisation and pharmaceutical consumption.

The theory of the normalisation of youth drug use in advanced capitalist societies has had an enduring legacy in contemporary drug scholarship. While the literature on the normalisation of 'illicit' drugs is well developed, less has been written about application of the theory to emerging discourse of pharmaceutical 'abuse', and how this might necessitate different thinking around what can be considered normal consumption. Pharmaceuticals are not directly associated with criminality, and their use does not traditionally attract stigma. In fact, social science scholarship has illustrated how many substances deemed illicit are normalised in the context of an ever-growing set of medical treatments. This paper explores the assumptions about legality, sociality and pleasure which sit behind the drug normalisation thesis, by reflecting on the relevance of drug normalisation in relation to pharmaceuticals, as well as examining scholarship on the medicalisation of society and qualitative research on non-medical use to illustrate the parallel processes of normalisation that apply to pharmaceuticals. The paper argues that questions of normalisation in relation to pharmaceutical use require a deeper engagement with the normative expectations we attach to pleasure, consumption and medicine, and the way this is structured by proximity to medical authority, whiteness and middle-classness.

The struggle with transnormativity: Non-binary identity work, embodiment desires, and experience with gender dysphoria.

I examine how non-binary people who have considered, or accessed, gender-affirming health care experience accountability to transnormativity using 12 in-depth interviews conducted between 2018 and 2019 in a midwestern American city. I detail how non-binary people who want to embody genders that are still largely culturally unintelligible think about identity, embodiment, and gender dysphoria. Using grounded theory methodology, I find that non-binary identity work around medicalization differs from that of transgender men and women in three primary ways: 1) regarding how they understand and operationalize gender dysphoria, 2) in relation to their embodiment goals, and 3) concerning how they experience pressure to medically transition. Non-binary people describe increased ontological uncertainty about their gender identities when researching gender dysphoria that is contextualized by an internalized sense of accountability to the transnormative expectation for medicalization. They additionally anticipate a potential medicalization paradox, where accessing gender-affirming care leads to a different type of binary misgendering and risks making their gender identities less, rather than more, culturally intelligible to others. Non-binary people also experience external accountability to transnormativity as pressure from trans and medical communities to think about dysphoria as inherently binaristic, embodied, and medically treatable. These findings indicate that non-binary people experience accountability to transnormativity differently than trans men and women. Since non-binary people and their body projects often disrupt the transnormative tropes that are the framework for trans medicine, they find trans therapeutics, and the diagnostic experience of gender dysphoria, uniquely problematic. Non-binary experiences of accountability to transnormativity indicate the need to re-center trans medicine to better accommodate non-normative embodiment desires and focus future diagnostic revisions of gender dysphoria to emphasize the social aspects of trans and non-binary experience.