Medicalization and illness identity

When the authors talk about the fashionable diagnosis of burnout one of the implications is that social factors are contributing to popularizing the term. Two concepts may be helpful, which have both been developed in (medical) sociology in recent years: medicalization and illness identity. Medicalization describes a process by which a social phenomenon that to date was not perceived as medically relevant now becomes defined by medical terms and/or treated with medical means (1). Recent analyses of medicalization processes have shown that non-medical social sectors play an increasing part in this, whereas doctors frequently meet the expansion of the area where medical definitions apply with some skepticism. The concept of illness identity makes clear how illness identities develop in the interaction of individual experiences (of suffering) and publicly available, media-popularized images and explanations of certain states of being or of illness (2), coming together into a specific disease narrative.

The purpose of this perspective, which in any case is complementary to medical views, is to gain a better understanding of the heterogeneous causes and background factors of the increased presence of burnout syndrome. Effective counter-measures may be prevented, for example, if the “problem” is perceived as merely that of the individual and as preferably treatable by medical means. It is important to understand how novel challenges from the workplace are translated into individual self-interpretations and images of identity (3), and what problematic effects socially predominant role models which are popularized by discourse may bring about in this setting. Especially in patients who overemphasize their capacity for competition and market-conform behavior without having reflected these sufficiently—for personal reasons—such internalized role models may contribute to people’s transgressing beyond their own limits to a degree that damages their health and may influence their personal management style.

DOI: 10.3238/arztebl.2012.0339b

PD Dr. phil. Peter Wehling

Dr. rer. pol. Willy Viehöver

Philosophisch-Sozialwissenschaftliche Fakultät, Lehrstuhl für Soziologie,
Universität Augsburg

Prof. Dr. med. Harald Gündel

Universitätsklinik für Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie,

Universitätsklinikum Ulm

Harald.Guendel@uniklinik-ulm.de

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that no conflict of interest exists.