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APPLIED SOCIOLOGY OF HEALTH AND ILLNESS This popular and accessible text continues to cover the basic principles of the sociology of health and illness in an eminently readable way. This fully revised second edition has been inspired, informed, and reviewed by medical students. By creatively employing a problem-based learning approach, the book examines commonly covered topics integrating underlying principles and research findings through real-life stories. The book investigates the relevance of sociology and considers a new direc- tion – one that places sociology in the context of healthcare settings, making the topic more realistic, useful, and memorable. The book will be an invaluable companion for medical students throughout undergraduate studies and is also a useful reference for students in nursing, social work, psychology, and sociology, as well as qual- ified doctors and healthcare practitioners. Applied Sociology of Health and Illness A Problem-Based Learning Approach Second Edition Costas S. Constantinou Professor of Medical Sociology University of Nicosia Medical School Nicosia, Cyprus Second edition published 2023 by CRC Press 6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742 and by CRC Press 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC © 2023 Costas S. Constantinou First edition published by CRC Press 2014 This book contains information obtained from authentic and highly regarded sources. While all reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, neither the author[s] nor the publisher can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. The publishers wish to make clear that any views or opinions expressed in this book by individual editors, authors or contributors are personal to them and do not necessarily reflect the views/opinions of the publishers. The information or guidance contained in this book is intended for use by medical, scientific or health-care professionals and is provided strictly as a supplement to the medical or other professional’s own judgement, their knowledge of the patient’s medical history, relevant manufacturer’s instructions and the appropriate best practice guidelines. Because of the rapid advances in medical science, any information or advice on dosages, procedures or diagnoses should be independently verified. The reader is strongly urged to consult the relevant national drug formulary and the drug companies’ and device or material manufacturers’ printed instructions, and their websites, before administering or utilizing any of the drugs, devices or materials mentioned in this book. 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For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access www .copyright. com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are not available on CCC please contact mpkbookspermissions@ tandf. co. uk Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. ISBN: 9781032188669 (hbk) ISBN: 9781032188652 (pbk) ISBN: 9781003256687 (ebk) DOI: 10.1201/9781003256687 Typeset in Sabon by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India To my family Contents Foreword to the first edition ix Preface xvi Acknowledgements xxi About the author xxiii Note about language xxiv Introduction 1 1 Lay health beliefs and doctor–patient relationships 13 2 The body as a social entity 31 3 The experience of chronic illness and disability 47 4 Labelling and stigma 63 5 Mental illness 80 6 Social inequalities in health 101 7 Gender and health 119 viii Contents 8 Ethnicity and health 135 9 Ageing society and older people 152 10 Digital health 169 Index 183 Foreword to the first edition WHY MEDICAL SOCIOLOGY IS IMPORTANT FOR A MODERN MEDICAL EDUCATION It was September 2006 when I first started teaching sociology, or bet- ter, medical sociology, to medical students at the then newly established Norwich Medical School at the University of East Anglia. I had taken up this important role before doing research on women’s experience of severe chronic illness and on patients’ understanding of informed consent in experiential medical trials. I remember being very excited at finally having been given the chance to contribute to the education of a new generation of doctors who surely would all be very fascinated in what I had to tell them about the social aspects of medicine and the importance of taking patients’ life stories and their often-complex backgrounds into account. Surely everybody would agree with me, so I thought, that medicine was not just about the body, but also about the person, their ideas, their experiences, and their view on being a patient. Surely, I thought, everybody would also agree with me that modern medicine also needed to take into account that for medical treatment to be successful, the doctors would have to be very much aware of their own social background as well as that of the patient. So, I set out to design the curriculum. To my astonishment, not only was there hardly anything published on how to teach medical sociology to medical students, but it was also the case that the lecturers who taught medical sociology before I did – all medical professionals – thought it was all just common-sense understanding. The first year of integrating medical sociology into a modern medical