Our unhealthy obsession with sickness

Our unhealthy obsession with sickness
Why is being ill now embraced as a positive part of the human experience?
by Frank Furedi

We live in a world where illnesses are on the increase. The distinguishing feature of the twenty-first century is that health has become a dominant issue, both in our personal lives and in public life. It has become a highly politicised issue, too, and an increasingly important site of government intervention and policymaking. With every year that passes, we seem to spend more and more time and resources thinking about health and sickness. I think there are four possible reasons for this.

First, there is the imperative of medicalisation. When the concept of medicalisation was first formulated, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, it referred to a far narrower range of phenomena than is the case today - and it was linked to the actions of a small number of professionals rather than having the all-pervasive character that it does now.

Essentially, the term medicalisation means that problems we encounter in everyday life are reinterpreted as medical ones. So problems that might traditionally have been defined as existential - that is, the problems of existence - have a medical label attached to them. Today, it is difficult to think of any kind of human experience that doesn't come with a health warning or some kind of medical explanation.

It is not only the experience of pain or distress or disappointment or engagement with adversity that is medicalised and seen as potentially traumatic and stress-inducing; even human characteristics are medicalised now. Consider shyness. It is quite normal to be shy; there are many circumstances where many of us feel shy and awkward. Yet shyness is now referred to as 'social phobia'. And, of course, when a medical label is attached to shyness, it is only a matter of time before a pharmaceutical company comes up with a 'shyness pill'. Pop these pills, and you too can become the life and soul of the party!

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