M1 unit 7

In this assignment I am going to assess the biomedical and socio-medical models of health.
The first thing I am going to talk about is biomedical model. Biomedical model of illness and healing focuses on purely biological factors, and excludes psychological, environmental, and social influences. According to the biomedical model of health, illness is caused by external factors that invades the body, or by some internal change that are involuntary. Also according to the model good health is the freedom from pain, disease, or defect. It focuses on physical processes that affect health, such as the biochemistry, physiology and pathology of a condition. This is considered to be the dominant, modern way for health care professionals to diagnose and treat a condition in most western countries. Most health care professionals do not first ask for a psychological or social history of a patient; instead they analyze and loo for biophysical of genetic malfunctions. The focus is more on laboratory tests rather than the history of a patient or the feelings of a patient. Biomedical health is known more as ‘scientific’ model and this is simply because it focuses on other forms of non-allopathic medicine. This is a good model as you find out whether you are ill or healthy straight away instead of been sent for lots of test and been told lots of different things. Biomedical model is very straight forward and you get told your answer very clearly. Biomedical model has it weaknesses, a weakness of this model is that there is little regard paid to environmental or social factor that affects illness is caused it just looks at how it is dealt with. This model is similar to functionalist views as it serves purpose: the health care system is an institution which serves the purpose of making people better sio that they can go straight back to work and perform their function in society.
The second and last one I am going to talk about is socio-medical model. This model focuses on the social factors that contribute to health in society. A social model of health considers how wider determinants have an impact on people’s health and the presence or absence of disease. Research has shown that the life expectancy increases and the death rate decrease in areas where there were improved conditions such as clean water, and improved standards of living. Socio medical model of health focuses on the environmental that affects people as briefly mention before: these include poverty, diet, pollution, and access to clean water and toilet facilities. These factors have strong impact on the overall health and wellness of individuals, communities, and even countries. An example of how this can benefit someone would be all the info on the use of netting to prevent malaria in Africa. Malaria is a disease that takes thousands of lives on a daily basis. Charities and health groups such as the world health organizations have been able to supply a net that costs a little bit of money and saved untold lives by preventing malaria; it also reduces health care costs. This theory is linked to Marxism as they would argue that shorter life expectancy and ill health among the poor was linked to their personal circumstances. The poor as a Marxist would say would probably have a poor diet, lack of exercise, live in poor housing and smoke. The bourgeoisie (middle class) are not willing to give up their finer things in order to help those in the proletariat (lower class) to gain better living conditions and therefore better health. This is opposite to biomedical model as this does focus on your economic factors and this is why it is good because you don’t just under go test you do say how you feel and what is actually wrong rather than them just telling you. Socio-medical model is bad as it does only concentrate on economic factors that affect health, and not anything else like media, or geographical location. It is only concerned with the fact poor people are ill more than rich people. This is why the NHS was made to stop all the class systems from causing problems for health.