What is the biomedical model of health?

The biomedical model treats health as the absence of biological abnormality and illness as a malfunction of the body that medicine can diagnose and repair.

Give three assumptions of the biomedical model.

That illness has a specific physical cause, that the body can be treated as a machine to be mended, and that qualified medical experts are the authority on health.

What is the doctrine of specific aetiology?

It is the assumption that every disease has one identifiable cause, which treatment should target directly.

How does the biomedical model treat the relationship between mind and body?

It separates them, treating physical disease as a matter of the body and giving little weight to a patient's social circumstances or state of mind.

What is the social model of health?

The social model explains health and illness by the conditions people live in, including income, housing, work, education and the environment, rather than by biology alone.

What did McKeown argue about the decline in mortality?

He argued that the great fall in deaths from infectious disease owed far more to better nutrition, clean water and sanitation than to medical treatment.

WJEC A-Level Sociology 601-5237-0

Culture and the Social Construction of Culture

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Health and Disability

The biomedical model and the social model of health

3 things to know
A2 Unit 3

Overview

Biomedical model of health, doctrine of specific aetiology and social model of health.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Your recallNot started

Key term

Set out Illich's charge against modern medicine and the case on the other side.

Key term

Why is the McKeown thesis important to the social model?

Key term

What did Illich mean by iatrogenesis?

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1
What is the biomedical model of health?
Model answer
The biomedical model treats health as the absence of biological abnormality and illness as a malfunction of the body that medicine can diagnose and repair.
2
Give three assumptions of the biomedical model.
Model answer
That illness has a specific physical cause, that the body can be treated as a machine to be mended, and that qualified medical experts are the authority on health.
3
What is the doctrine of specific aetiology?
Model answer
It is the assumption that every disease has one identifiable cause, which treatment should target directly.
4
How does the biomedical model treat the relationship between mind and body?
Model answer
It separates them, treating physical disease as a matter of the body and giving little weight to a patient's social circumstances or state of mind.
5
What is the social model of health?
Model answer
The social model explains health and illness by the conditions people live in, including income, housing, work, education and the environment, rather than by biology alone.
6
What did McKeown argue about the decline in mortality?
Model answer
He argued that the great fall in deaths from infectious disease owed far more to better nutrition, clean water and sanitation than to medical treatment.

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