Tagged: medical sociology

Opinion / Social Psychology & Lifecourse / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

You are what you swallow? Considering the moral implications of psychiatric diagnosis for children

It’s not easy to question things that have been life changing for some people. As more and more people seek or receive psychiatric diagnosis, it becomes a very personal thing to question its validity. When I wrote an opinion piece in 2023 suggesting moral implications associated with increasing psychiatric diagnosis of children, I felt nervous. Nervous of invalidating the experiences of others but also nervous of the implications of questioning medical hegemony without undermining the hard fought for systems of...

Applied Sociology / Opinion / Social Theory / Sociology of Children / Sociology of Health & Illness

Can young children give or withhold consent to heart surgery? Obstacles to innovative research

When we began to research children’s consent to non-urgent heart surgery in 2019, we were surprised by the healthcare professionals’ enthusiasm for consent with the right to refuse. In the first of our 45 interviews with practitioners and related experts, an anaesthetist said: “As a group, we would like to be the best in the world at doing some kind of evidence-based consent that is great for patients and legally robust.  We’re aiming to be amazing at it…Definitely some four-year-olds...

Opinion / Science & Technology / Sociology of Health & Illness / Sociology of Media & Communication

How to make sense of the debate on “study drugs”?

“Medicalization“ as a theoretical concept has received much attention in sociology throughout decades and people’s drug use is a social phenomenon investigated from different perspectives in the social and life sciences. Research on “study drugs” is an area where many of these perspectives converge – not only because it prompts us to reconsider the treatment/enhancement distinction. In this article, Stephan Schleim describes how the topic of (allegedly) performance-enhancing drugs has fascinated him since high school. When scholars started discussing this...

Applied Sociology / Opinion / Research Brief / Science & Technology / Sociology of Health & Illness

What is Medical AI Good For?

The use of artificial intelligence has grown rapidly, especially in the field of medicine, with the promise of offering advances ranging from more efficient diagnoses to safer treatments. Yet, this promise overlooks the fact that artificial intelligence still faces some pretty serious limitations, you know, the kind of limitations that prevent the machine from operating like we see in television and movies. Simply stated, artificial intelligence is still not yet that intelligent. Yes, artificial intelligence can do well at particular...