The Medicalization of Life

Is a lively and boisterous child a sick child? Is feeling shy and nervous when you meet new people a sign of depression? Does alternating days of happiness and sadness imply bipolar disorder? Should small breasts be "cured"? Why should a man of seventy have the sexuality of a teenager? In order to be more concentrated at work should we use amphetamines?
In many affluent societies, and especially in the United States, we are experiencing a growing medicalization of everyday life. Some human conditions which were once considered normal are now considered pathological. Furthermore, in many Western countries there has been an incredible increase in mental disorders such as social anxiety, ADHD, depression and bipolar disorder, which raises questions about the diagnostic criteria on which pharmaceuticals are prescribed. The levels upon which people are considered "at risk" of cholesterol and hypertension have been lowered thus introducing the concepts of 'protopathologies' and of "pre-sick" people (the medicalization of prevention). On the other hand, we can also state that a large part of the medicine complex has shifted focus from cure to optimization, which characterizes some bio economic strategies.
The possibility of intervention on a genetic level, has further contributed to blurring the borders between pathology and normality.
This volume, containing contributions from scholars of different nationalities, presents updated answers to the dilemmas emerging from the ongoing medicalization of everyday life.

Antonio Maturo is Assistant Professor of Sociology of Health at the Facoltà di Scienze Politiche "Roberto Ruffilli" - Università di Bologna. He has written a handbook on the sociology of illness (in Italian). Antonio Maturo taught Medical Sociology at Brown University and was Visiting Scientist at both Harvard and New York University. He has given talks at Boston University, Umeå Universiteit, and Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, among others.
Peter Conrad is Harry Coplan Professor of Social Sciences at Brandeis University. He served as chair of the Department of Sociology for nine years and is currently chair of the interdisciplinary program "Health: Science, Society and Policy" (HSSP). He is the author of over one hundred articles and chapters and nine books, including the awarding winning, Deviance and Medicalization: From Badness to Sickness (with Joseph W. Schneider) and his most recent book, The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders (2007). He has served as chair of the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (1989-1990).