
are found in urban areas as well. This also suggests an important gendering of health in
the US, where conditions associated with women have not necessarily been treated as
seriously or even taken into account in terms of difference in dosage and side effects.
Several factors are significant in the social production of wellness and disease. First,
there are the ways in which social relations themselves produce forms and distributions
of wellness and disease in American society along racial, class, age and gender
differences. For example, gender relations, of age, class and ethnicity in association with
social values in America placed on the attainment of certain kinds and images o
bodies—thin, youthful bodies—in this century has led to alarming increases in the
revalence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia. These health conditions related to eating
disorders, and obsessive and compulsive behaviors have for the most part plagued young,
white, middle-class women, and represent the nexus of a cultural aesthetic that associates
thinness, success, sexuality and control with social forms—gender relations—and
practices—eating, diet, exercise and other bodily functions.
Second, differential access to both regular proactive care and special interventions,
which may cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, depends on many factors, especially
insurance, for which social structure matters. While
homeless
people in the United States
may experience the same health problems that other Americans do, they lack support
from a variety of networks. Hence, limited access to medical provisions only works to
exacerbate sickness episodes. Medical pluralism in the United States is historically the
product of differential access to healthcare due to class, race, gender and age differences.
A third factor, the role that the American healthcare system plays in the production o
wellness and disease had, until recently nearly always been considered in light of the
former. Latrogenic illness and disease caused by the health practitioner and a system o
healthcare, whether lead poisoning due to the use of traditional medicines in the case o
the use of azarcón or
greta
to treat empacho in
Latino
communities in the United States,
or the appropriation of human birth as a health problem dealt with in hospital settings by
hysicians, has become a central feature in the increasing medicalization of American
life. Perhaps nowhere else has this social process been more evident than in the area o
mental health. From alcoholism to depression, from premenstrual syndrome to attention
deficit disorder, the psychological history of human life has received close scrutiny in
research and in therapy.
The popular sector of health has grown exponentially and is easily that matrix o
information—personal, mediated, expert, lay—where most people experience disease and
wellness, make healthcare decisions and evaluate those decisions before making others.
Schools have played a strong role in conveying health knowledge and regulation. In the
late 1990s, both
newspapers
and
television
news devote regular space to health issues—
local television, for example, has made medical reporters and features a norm.
Magazines, both general and specialized (e.g.
Men’s Health
), also promote this dialogue.
Fictional depictions of disease have been staples of melodrama for centuries, and remain
the stuff of
Hollywood
as well as television. More complex worlds of cause and cure, as
well, have underpinned ongoing doctor shows, from
Dr Kïldare
and
Marcus Welby, MD
Entries A-Z 525