medical sociology research paper topics

100+ Best Sociology Research Topics

Table of contents

• 1 What is Sociology Research Paper?
• 2 Tips on How To Choose a Good Sociology Research Topic
• 3 Culture and Society Sociology Research Topics
• 4 Urban Sociology Topics
• 5 Education Sociology Research Topics
• 6 Race and Ethnicity Sociology Research Topics
• 7 Medicine and Mental Health Sociology Research Topics
• 8 Family Sociology Research Topics
• 9 Environmental Sociology Research Topics
• 10 Crime Sociology Research Topics
• 11 Sociology Research Topics for High School Students
• 12.1 Conclusion

As the name suggests, Sociology is one topic that provides users with information about social relations. Sociology cuts into different areas, including family and social networks.

As the name suggests, Sociology is one topic that provides users with information about social relations. Sociology cuts into different areas, including family and social networks. It cuts across all other categories of relationships that involve more than one communicating human. Hence this is to say that sociology, as a discipline and research interest, studies the behaviour and nature of humans when associating with each other.

Sociology generally involves research. It analyses empirical data to conclude humans psychology. Factor analysis is one of the popular tools with which sociology research is carried out. Other tools that stand out are research papers.

Sociology research topics and research are deep data-based studies. With which experts learn more about the human-to-human association and their respective psychology. There are dedicated easy sociology research topics on gender and sociology research topics for college students. They are majorly passed on as a thesis. This article will consider Sociology Research papers and different types of essay topics relevant to modern times.

What is Sociology Research Paper?

A sociology Research paper or essay is written in a format similar to a report. It is fundamentally rooted in statistical analysis, Interviews, questionnaires, text analysis, and many more metrics. It is a sociology research paper because it includes studying the human state in terms of living, activity, couples and family association, and survival.

The most demanding part of a sociology research writing project is drafting a quantitative analysis. Many college projects and post-graduate theses will require quantitative analysis for results. However, sociology topics for traditional purposes may only need textual analysis founded on simple close-end questionnaires.

To write a sociology research topic, one will need to know the problem and how to get the needed solution. A sociology project must have a problem, a hypothesis, and the possible best solution for solving it. It must also be unique, which means it is not just a piece of writing that can be lifted anywhere from the internet. It is best to pay for a research paper founded on sociology to know how to create an excellent context matter or use it for your project.

Tips on How To Choose a Good Sociology Research Topic

It is one thing to understand the concept of a research topic and another to know how to write a sociology paper . There are processes and things that must be followed for a research paper to come outright. It includes researching, outlining, planning, and organizing the steps.

It is important to have a systematic arrangement of your steps. This is done in other to get excellent Sociology research topic ideas. The steps to getting perfect Sociology research paper topics are outlined below.

• Choose a topic  that works with your Strength While it may be tempting to pick a unique topic, you should go for one that you can easily work on. This is very important as you will be able to provide a strong case. That is when dealing with a subject you understand compared to one that you barely know how works. Unless otherwise stated, always choose a topic you understand.
• Pick a good Scope The next step you should take after selecting a topic is to narrow it to a problem or several related problems that a single hypothesis can conveniently encompass. This will help you achieve a better concentration of effort and give you a very strong ground as you know the direction of the research before you even start.

While these steps are significant, you should have a concrete understanding of sociology to craft a standard project. If that is a little complex for you, you should buy a research paper on sociology at affordable prices to get what you want. You can find several reliable service providers online.

Culture and Society Sociology Research Topics

Culture and society are the foundation of sociology research projects. Humans are divided into different cultures and are categorized into societies. There is a sense of class, status, and, sadly, race bias. Sociology paper projects usually focus on these metrics to understand why humans act the way they do and what is expected over the years.

This section will consider the best sociology research paper topics examples that you can work with.

• The effect of cultural appropriation in the long term.
• The effect of media on human attitude and behavior.
• How political differences affect friendship and family relationships.
• Important social justice issues affecting society.
• Association between political affiliation and religion.
• Adult children who care for their children while also caring for their aged parents.
• Senior citizens who are beyond retirement age and still in the workforce.
• The effect and evolution of cancel culture.
• Public distrust in political appointees and elected officials.
• The unique separation challenges that those who work from home face in their workplace.

Urban Sociology Topics

With immense progress in every sector and the continuous evolution of technology, the conventional and more conservative way of association is fading off. These days, almost every person wants to be associated with the urban lifestyle. This section considers Easy sociology research titles in urban lifestyles and what they hold for the future.

• The human relationship and social media.
• Characteristics of long-lasting childhood relationship.
• Industrial Revolution and its impact on a relationship and family structure.
• Factors that lead to divorce.
• Urban spacing and policy.
• Urban services as regards local welfare.
• Socialisation: how it has evolved over time.
• Infertility and its impact on marriage success.
• Marginalised and vulnerable groups in urban areas.

Education Sociology Research Topics

Education is social. The younger age group of any society population is the target of sociology research. Most Sociology Research Topics on Education focus on how teenagers and young adults relate with themselves, modernized equipment, and the available resources.

Here are some topics on Education Sociology Research Topic:

• The relationship between success in school and socioeconomic status.
• To what extent do low-income families rely on the school to provide food for their children?
• The outcome of classroom learning compared to homeschool pupils.
• How does peer pressure affect school children?
• To what extent do standardized admission tests determine college success?
• What is the link between k-12 success and college success?
• The role of school attendance on children’s social skills progress.
• How to promote equality among school children from economic handicap backgrounds.
• The bias prevalent in the k-12 curricula approved by the state.
• The effect of preschool on a child’s elementary school success.

Race and Ethnicity Sociology Research Topics

Race and ethnicity are major categories in sociology, and as such, there are many sociology research topics and ideas that you can select from. This section considers several race-based titles for research.

• The race-based bias that happens in the workplace.
• Pros and cons of interracial marriages.
• Areas of life where race-based discrimination is prevalent.
• Racial stereotypes have the potential to destroy people’s life.
• How does nationality determine career development?
• Assimilation and immigration.
• Voter’s behaviour towards gender and race.
• Gender and racial wage gaps.
• As an American immigrant, how do I become a validated voter?
• Underpinning ethics of nationality, ethnicity, and race.

Medicine and Mental Health Sociology Research Topics

Medical sociology research topics ideas are among the more social science project work option available to social scientists. Society has always affected the growth of medicine and mental health, and some data back this claim.

There are many medicines & mental health Sociological Topics that you can work on, and the major ones are considered in this section.

• The impact of COVID-19 on our health.
• Is milk harmful to adults, or is it another myth?
• Unhealthy and healthy methods of dealing with stress.
• Is it ethical to transplant organs?
• How do people become addicts?
• How does lack of regular sleep affect our health?
• The effect of sugar consumption on our health.
• The effects of bullying on the person’s mental health.
• The relationship between social depression or anxiety and social media presence.
• The effects of school shootings on students’ mental health, parents, staff, and faculty.

Family Sociology Research Topics

Sociology research topics on family are one of the more interesting sociology-based topics that researchers and experts consider. Here are some topics in family sociology research topics.

• How does divorce affect children?
• The impact of cross-racial adoption on society and children.
• The impact of single parenting on children.
• Social programs are designed for children who have challenges communicating with their parents.
• Sociology of marriage and families.
• How to quit helicopter parenting.
• The expectation of parents on the work that nannies do.
• Should children learn gender studies from childhood?
• Can a healthy kid be raised in an unconventional family?
• How much should parents influence their children’s attitudes, behaviour, and decisions?

Environmental Sociology Research Topics

This section considers sociology research titles on the environment

• Should green energy be used instead of atomic energy sources?
• The relationship between nature and consumerism culture.
• The bias from the media during environmental issues coverage.
• Political global changes are resulting in environmental challenges.
• How to prevent industrial waste from remote areas of the world.
• Utilising of natural resources and the digital era.
• Why middle school students should be taught social ecology.
• What is the connection between environmental conditions and group behaviour?
• How can the condition of an environment affect its population, public health, economic livelihoods, and everyday life?
• The relationship between economic factors and environmental conditions.

Crime Sociology Research Topics

There are multiple Sociology research topics on crime that researchers can create projects on. Here are the top choices to select from.

• The crime rate changes in places where marijuana is legalised.
• How does the unemployment rate influence crime?
• The relationship between juvenile crime and the social, economic status of the family.
• Factors that determine gang membership or affiliation.
• How does upbringing affect adult anti-social behaviour?
• How does cultural background and gender affect how a person views drug abuse.
• The relationship between law violation and mental health.
• How can gun possession be made safe with stricter laws?
• The difference between homicide and murder.
• The difference between criminal and civil cases.

Sociology Research Topics for High School Students

High school students are a major part of sociology research due to the peculiarity of the population. Here are some topics in sociology research.

• The effect of social media usage in the classroom.
• The impact of online communication on one’s social skills.
• The difference between spiritualism and religion.
• Should males and females have the same rights in the workplace?
• How gender and role stereotypes are presented on TV.
• The effect of music and music education on teenagers.
• The effect of globalisation on various cultures.
• What influences the problematic attitudes of young people towards their future.
• The effect of meat consumption on our environment.
• The factors contributing to the rate of high school dropouts.

Sociology Research Topics for College Students

Several sociology research topics focus on college students, and this section will consider them.

• Immigration and assimilation.
• Big cities and racial segregation.
• Multicultural Society and dominant cultures.
• College students and social media.
• The role of nationalities and language at school.
• School adolescents and their deviant behaviour.
• Ways of resolving conflict while on campus.
• Social movements impact the awareness of bullying.
• The role models of the past decade versus the ones in recent times.
• The effect of changes in the educational field on new students.

Sociology is a fascinating field of study, and there are plenty of compelling research topics to choose from. Writing an essay on sociology can be a challenging task if you don’t know where to start. If you’re feeling overwhelmed, you can always turn to a writing essay service for help. There are many services that offer professional assistance in researching and crafting a sociology essay. From exploring popular sociological theories to looking at current events, there are countless topics to consider.

This article has considered a vast Sociology research topics list. The topics were divided into ten different categories directly impacted by the concept of sociology. These topic examples are well-drafted and are in line with the demand for recent sociological concepts. Therefore if you seek topics in sociology that you would love to work on, then the ones on this list are good options to consider.

However, you need to understand the basics of draft sociology research to get the benefits of these topics. If that is not possible given the time frame of the project, then you could opt to buy sociology research on your desired topic of interest.

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Taking “The Promise” Seriously: Medical Sociology’s Role in Health, Illness, and Healing in a Time of Social Change

Bernice a. pescosolido.

Department of Sociology, Indiana University, 1022 E. Third Street, Bloomington, IN 47405 USA

In 1959, C.W. Mills published his now famous treatise on what sociology uniquely brings to understanding the world and the people in it. Every sociologist, of whatever ilk, has had at least a brush with the “sociological imagination,” and nearly everyone who has taken a sociology course has encountered some version of it. As Mills argued, the link between the individual and society, between personal troubles and social issues, between biography and history, or between individual crises and institutional contradictions represents the core vision of the discipline of sociology. While reminding ourselves of the “promise” may be a bit trite, its mention raises the critical question: Why do we have to continually remind ourselves of the unique contribution that we, as sociologists, bring to understanding health, illness, and healing?

Introduction: Taking Stock of the Intellectual and Societal Landscape of Medical Sociology

Perhaps, we remind ourselves because the sociological imagination is so complex – a multilayered perspective that ties together dynamics processes, social structures, and individual variation. While Mills ( 1959 , p. 4) himself argued that “ordinary men…do not possess the quality of mind essential to grasp the interplay,” this seems a bit overplayed. There have always been people – in the academy, in the workroom, or in the home – who have heard and understood the deafening voice of oppressive social norms drowning out opportunity. There have always been people who have noted, described, and taken advantage of changes in opportunity structures to improve their fate. And, despite modern medicine’s reductionist and mechanical view of the body, which may or may not be changing, there have always been the Rudolph Virchows, the Milton and Ruth Roemers, the George Readers, and the Howard Waitzkins, alongside the majority. While the sociological perspective may find a particular challenge in the United States with its strong strain of individualism, there have always been those who have captured the hearts, sparked the intelligence, and harnessed the energy of the group as a way to overcome the existing limits of their surroundings. From the rise [and fall] of unions; to the improvement of working conditions in toxic factory work; to the formation of professional associations in medicine, nursing and their specialties; to women’s health cooperatives designed to counter the insensitivity of regular medicine, instances of confronting the status quo through affiliation and association stand as exemplars of the tacit, “on-the-ground” understanding of the sociological imagination.

I would argue, rather, that we need to be reminded of the central premises of sociology and what we bring to table precisely because we have been successful, even if quietly so. In essence, the major dilemma that we confront at present is that the “promise” is obvious, not only to ourselves, but to others. The idea that context matters has taken hold across the sociomedical sciences, the bio-medical sciences, and even the basic sciences like genetics and cognitive science (see Pescosolido 2006 for a review). Ideas of health and health care disparities (which we have called inequalities for over 100 years in sociology, and for over 50 years in the subfield of medical sociology); fundamental causes (as Link and Phelan, 1995 , so eloquently labeled sociologists’ baseline concern with power, stratification and social differentiation); and social networks as vectors of social and organizational influence (now renamed “Network Science”) stand front and center in the concerns of the National Institutes of Health and other major scientific organizations. Whether our arguments and research findings have been persistent, robust and convincing, or whether these insights coincide with the recognition by the more reductionist sciences that even their most sophisticated approaches cannot solve the problems of the body and the mind alone, is of little consequence. When the newly appointed director of the NIH, Dr. Francis Collins, who led the Human Genome Project, announces the launching of a special program to increase attention and resources to basic behavioral and social science (November 18, 2009, www.oppnet.nih.gov ) using phrases like “synergy,” “vital component,” and “complex factors that affect individuals, our communities and our environment,” the crack in the door of mainstream biomedical science becomes just a little wider, and the seat at the table becomes just a little more possible.

Sometimes, the role of sociologists is obvious in these new declarations of important directions in science and medicine; other times, they appear as “discoveries” without much, if any, attribution. But to belabor the historical debt that contemporary health and health care researchers and policymakers may owe us is a waste of both time and energy. Sociology has a history of conceptualizing social life, making that view understandable, and having its insights and even its language absorbed as “common sense” into both academic and civil life (e.g., clique, identity, self-fulfilling prophecy, social class, disparities, networks). More to the point, Mills argued that the sociological imagination is a “task” as well as a “promise.” He described that task – “to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society” ( 1959 , p. 6) – through the work of major sociologists of his time as “comprehensive,” “graceful,” “intricate,” “subtle,” and “ironic.” With “many-sided constructions,” a focus on meaning, and a willingness to look across social institutions like polity, the economy, and the domestic sphere (1959, p. 6), Auguste Comte and others came to define sociology’s aspiration as the “Queen of the Social Sciences,” a phrase more commonly used now by economists or political scientists to describe their discipline. Similarly, Mills ( 1959 ) sees sociology as holding “the best statements of the full promise of the social sciences as a whole” ( 1959 , p. 24), and I have argued elsewhere that taking sociology’s view of social interactions in networks represents one promising approach to integrating the health sciences (Pescosolido 2006 ).

The complexities in topic, theory and methods, sometimes the object of divisions in sociology and sometimes a detriment in the “sound bite” approach to modern society, continue to be our strength, and are not always obvious to others who adopt the mantra of “context.” Our research focuses on how individuals, organizations, and nations are “selected and formed, liberated and repressed, made sensitive and blunted” (Mills 1959 , p. 7). We accept the unexpected, we expect latent functions of policies and actions of even those who are trying to do good, we understand that being an outsider has its advantages in understanding the world, and we embrace the notion of comparison and reject a “provincial narrowing to the interest to the Western societies” ( 1959 , p. 12). Whenever we look at a life, a “disease,” a health care system, or a nation’s epidemiological profile, examining which “values are cherished yet threatened” ( 1959 , p. 11) is inevitable. As Hung ( 2004 ) has recently documented for the SARS virus and Epstein ( 1996 ) for HIV/AIDS, the societal ­reactions to viral pandemics are deeply rooted in social cleavages rather than biological fact, whether this reaction unearthed the racist view of the “Yellow peril” or the homophobic view of the “Gay plague.”

In sum, at this point in time, it may be more important than ever to recall our mission and accept the uneasiness which is endemic (and according to Mills, necessary) to it. The sociological imagination requires “the capacity to shift from one perspective to another – from the political to the psychological….to range from the most impersonal and remote transformations to the most intimate features of the human self – and to see the relations between the two” ( 1959 , p. 7). Our training emphasizes this, our theories conceptualize it, and the wide variety of our research methods reflect it. We bring this self-consciousness to the problems of health, illness, and healing, and hopefully to their solutions. Which subfield of sociology, more than the sociology of health, illness, and healing, provides a critical window into making “clear the elements of contemporary uneasiness and indifference” that Mills sees as “the social scientists’ foremost political and intellectual task” ( 1959 , p. 13)? While Mills may have been premature, or flat out wrong, in his prediction that the social sciences would overthrow the dominance of the physical and biological sciences, his view was prescient regarding the rising importance of “context” in biomedical sciences ( 1959 , p. 13) and increasing doubts about the inevitable and pristine nature of science. As those inside the “House of Medicine” itself dare to question the utility of the “gold standard” (RCT, the randomized clinical trial) versus observational studies (Concato et al. 2000 ), the validity of the placebo as a “control” (Leuchter et al. 2002 ), and the robustness of “established” genetic links (Gelernter et al. 1991 ), the radical critiques of the objectivity of science and the inevitability of linear progress in science have come from inside as well as outside (Gieryn 1983 ; Latour 1999 ). It is naïve to assume or even expect a reconstruction of the prestige hierarchy of the sciences, as Mills does to some extent. He forgets that institutional supports undergird that dominance, as any of us who have served on interdisciplinary review panels will attest. Yet, the idea that there may be occasional openings for concerns and approaches by social scientists was prophetic. This may be one of those unique times to work together to push not only our understandings forward, but to foster institutional social change. At the least, it is a time when social scientists, especially sociologists, need to have their voices heard; that is, to have a place at the table to guard against a crass, out-of-date, and generally poor appropriation of the social sciences’ basic ideas and tools. Those of us who witnessed a wider acceptance of (even called for) social science methods such as ethnography in the 1980s and 1990s in the mental health research agenda, also witnessed the dumping of the term into one sentence of a traditional research proposal without any idea of its complexity, rigor, or even utility to expand the limited insights of clinical research. Bearman ( 2008 , p. vi) downplays concerns that this kind of scientific diffusion may “distort the sociological project” because “the beauty of sociology as a discipline rests in its hybridity with respect to method and data” and new research concerns can become a potential “lever” for sociology to escape some of its own “hegemonic” foci.

The Task Ahead: Mapping the Landscape of Health, Illness, and Healing for the Next Decades

As Mills reminds us, the insights of sociology are both “a terrible lesson and a magnificent one.” Perhaps, this is more true in medical sociology than in other areas of the discipline; maybe not. Yet, the historical and contemporary landscape of health, illness, and healing challenges medical sociologists to think about both the issues/topics that have drawn and continue to draw our attention, as well as new ones on the horizon.

The Metaphor of Cartography

Recently, Sigrun Olafsdottir and I ( 2009 , 2010) drew from the “cultural turn” in sociology to reframe key theoretical and methodological issues in health care utilization research. We considered whether some individuals map a larger set of choices, examined if and how they differentiate between different sources of formal treatment, and questioned whether the way we ask those in our research about their experiences shapes the responses they give. This imagery of cultural landscapes and boundaries (Gieryn 1983 , 1999 ) seems to fit the multifaceted, complex nature of health, illness, and healing in the current era. Individuals use cultural maps to make sense of the world, affecting information availability and personal understandings, as well as signaling possible appropriate action. While Gieryn’s work focuses on professions, primarily scientists and the rhetorical strategies they use to establish, extend, and protect their societal authority, these ideas have broader relevance, not only for other professionals like physicians, but for the public. In particular, the concept of “boundary-work” becomes central as individuals, whatever their position, confront illness, define disease, and react to treatment options. The term “cultural mapping,” targeting the terrain of choices, as well as individuals’ recognition, acceptance, or rejection of them, informs us about the boundaries of their experience, and values shaping action, whether their own (as in rational choice theory) or that of others (as in labeling, social influence, and social control theories).

In essence, cultural landscapes shape individuals’ everyday decisions and actions, including those of medical sociologists. The metaphor of cultural cartography allows us not only to organize our topical research agendas but also our challenges for the next generation of medical sociology. In essence, two different maps require our attention. One is a map of topographical changes in health and health care that mark out new or continued areas of inquiry; the second maps the boundaries of discipline, the joint jurisdiction of sociology with the subfield of medical sociology, and how these two symbiotically share intellectual territory.

Contextualizing and Researching Health, Medicine, Health Care, and the Biomedical Sciences: Time of Change from the Outside

There is little doubt that the essential questions of sociology and medical sociology – more specifically, of the importance of Weber’s link between lifestyle (i.e., social psychological as well as social organization) and life chances – remain paramount and require our continued attention. Causes (epidemiology) and consequences (outcomes, health services research) continue to crudely, and increasingly inaccurately, define research agendas as we emphasize more dynamic processes which connect the two. Medical sociologists continue to more broadly conceive the landscape of epidemiology than do our sister subfields of medicine and public health. That is, with regard to issues of mortality and morbidity, the distribution and the determinants of disease must consider issues of professional power, social movements, contested meaning, and social construction (or its cousin specific to medical sociology, medicalization) as well as traditional risk and protective factors like genetics, biological markers, psychological trauma, or even individuals lifestyles (Brown 1995 ; McKinlay 1996 ). To understand utilization, adherence, health care system, and outcomes, we need to incorporate dynamic views, describe different response pathways, and confront changing boundaries of legitimacy regarding potential patients, healers, and formal structures of care (Pescosolido 1991 , 1992 ).

In addition to these classic, general prescriptions, three newer but deep-seated developments call for sociological theorizing and research. Necessarily, some of these are intertwined with our classic concerns but, nevertheless, they raise new challenges.

Human Genome Project and the Larger Push for Understanding Context

Not all that new, the first phase of the project, designed to determine the sequence of base pairs in the entire human genome, began in 1990 and continued for 13 years. Yet, as Francis Collins and others have noted, we are only beginning to understand what we have and can learn both in a positive and negative sense. Sociologists have tread into that territory lightly, now starting to work their way toward the profound implications of this massive project and the larger cultural institutions that created and continue to nurture it (e.g., Phelan 2005 ). Perhaps, the most obvious is the potential for collaborative projects on epigenetics and on gene-environment interactions (g x e) (i.e., how environmental conditions which include society not only trigger or suppress genetic predispositions but, in fact, change the genome itself; Szyf 2009 ). While complicated, this may not be the most challenging. It was a recent special issue of the American Journal of Sociology (Bearman 2008 , p. vi) that turned an obvious research question on its head: “What can we learn about social structure and social processes, and what can we learn about our accounts about social structure and social processes, by ‘thinking about genetics’?” Fleshing this out even a little raises classic sociological questions. How is the genetics agenda constructed by medicine, by insurance companies, by the public, and by science itself, to name just a few? What does this mean for the definition and behavioral implications of human health, legitimate constructions of illness by the public and the profession, shifting definitions of vulnerability, and changes in the nature and targets of prejudice and discrimination? While bioethicists and philosophers have asked and deliberated on these questions, medical sociologists bring evidence to bear on the creation, maintenance, and effects of this now dominant weltanschauung in medicine, science, and society. We have the tools to ensure that the powerful forces of society are understood, elaborated, and included in our understandings of the onset of what becomes labeled disease and disorder. We have the tools to uncover the unexpected, latent functions of this direction which, in themselves, will raise new challenges for the very institutions that placed their hopes in “the language of God” (Collins 2006 ).

The Mess that Is “Translational Science” and the Need for Sociological Clarity

Of the new “medical speak” that dominates discussions of future directions, the current ubiquitous term is “translation.” Unfortunately, while critically targeting the lack of effective transfer across stakeholder communities, this term has confounded discussions and attempts to provide solutions. Even in a quick survey of existing documents that call for “translation,” at least three meanings are evident. The first translation dilemma, which can be referred to as a dissemination problem, suggests a need for more effective ways to communicate information between scientists and “end-users.” The second translation dilemma, an implementation problem (also the efficacy–effectiveness gap), suggests a need to understand how to translate science into services that result in meaningful clinical care (National Advisory Mental Health Council 2000 ). Finally, the third translation dilemma, referred to as a problem of integration , suggests that the insights and potential contributions of different branches of science have not been fully incorporated in efforts to either establish research agendas or to provide high quality effective care in the formal treatment sector.

Each of these suggests complicated problems, all recast as problems of “translation,” for a diverse array of stakeholder communities and, to date, traditional research approaches have not offered good answers. Each calls for sociological research on a series of basic questions. First, why do providers and consumers fail to take advantage of cutting-edge science? A frequent complaint expressed by research scientists, payers, and policy makers is that cutting-edge interventions are neither adopted in day-to-day clinical work nor accepted by individuals with health problems who might benefit. Second, why do treatments that have been “proven” to work in randomized clinical trials fail to work in real world settings? A continual frustration of providers is that clinical research fails to take into account the challenges of day-to-day clinical work and does not offer a realistic understanding of the complexities and limitations of providing care. A similar frustration of consumers and advocates is that clinical research fails to take into account the complex realities of the lives of persons who fall ill, especially those with chronic and stigmatized problems. Third, why has health services research not been able to bridge the gap to allow proven clinical interventions to find application to the “real world” needs of consumers, practitioners, payers, and policy makers (Pellmar and Eisenberg 2000 )? Each of these requires an understanding of “cultures” – the culture of the public, the culture of the clinic, the culture of community, and of organizations. Sociological research holds the potential to understand how cultures are shaped; how they are enacted; how they clash or coincide with one another; and how, in the end, cultural scripts facilitate, retard, or even prohibit institutional social change. Sometimes, these discussions have the reductionist tone of lack of motivation without understanding the power of institution and resource as well as the social network structures that cripple innovation. More importantly, these challenges call for a holistic approach to research in which different levels of change, as well as the individuals in them, are conceptualized as linked and intertwined, with outcomes measured through innovative quantitative approaches and mechanisms observed through in-depth qualitative observations. In no way would such studies exclude the expertise of other scientists; indeed they call for it. However, the multilayered, multimethod and connected approach inherent in medical sociology provides an overarching organizing framework that can facilitate the integration of different interdisciplinary insights (Pescosolido 2006 ).

The “Hundred Year’s War” of American Medicine and Mechanic’s Continued Call for Sociological Understandings

Ironically, exactly 100 years ago, the Flexner Report “closed the books” on the blueprint for the primary structure and power of medicine in America. The 1910 document, crafted by middle-class men with middle-class values building the new institutions of industrial society, called for the active and specific funneling of large amounts of money from the new industrial tycoons who, themselves, had other ideas about what the US health care system should look like (Pescosolido and Martin 2004 ). However, drawing from the recent “successes” of the “new” scientific medical schools of Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, the Flexner Report set a trajectory and the Rockefeller Foundation fiscally supported a process of mimetic isomorphism for other emergent medical institutions. America’s health care system was built primarily with private funds, dominated by the allopathic physician, and supported though a fee-for-service economy (Freidson 1970 ; Starr 1982 ). The era from the Flexner report until President Nixon’s proclamation of a “Health Care Crisis” in 1970 has been described by McKinlay and Marceau ( 2002 ) as the “Golden Age of Doctoring,” by Clarke and her colleagues as the “Medicalization Era” (Clarke and Shim 2010 ), and by us, using Eliot Freidson’s ( 1970 ) terms, as “The Era of Professional Dominance” (Pescosolido and Boyer 2001 ). Working in a primarily private health care system, physicians determined both the nature of medical care and the arrangements under which it was provided. Even with the introduction of private (and later public) insurance, the American system remained an anomaly on the global landscape. The richest country in the world, which spent more on research, technology, and care than any other, also was home to the greatest number and proportion of uninsured citizens and to standard indicators of population health that fell way below those of countries with fewer resources and less of them devoted to health.

The year 2010, 100 years after the Flexner Report, saw the initial passage of President Obama’s Health Care Plan. What will result from this shift in the U.S. position on health care as right and as privilege? Will it be dramatic and devastating as some claim? Dramatic and good as others claim? Given the early capitulation to (or some would say, inclusion) of key opponents of earlier reforms, will this plan result in more patching of an essentially private system in the stranglehold of insurance and pharmaceutical companies? Will reform suffer the fate of what many of us thought/hoped would be the “second great transformation” (Stone 1999 ) or “construction of the second social contract” between American medicine and society (Pescosolido and Kronenfeld 1995 ) in the Clinton Health Reform of 1990? Or, will this “accommodation,” as was the case with high physician reimbursement levels during the Medicaid/Medicare deliberations, mean that something will actually change?

The failed federal effort of the 1990s nevertheless ushered in the “Era of Managed Care” which both supporters and critics of the existing health care system feared (Pescosolido and Boyer 2001 ). But as Mechanic et al. ( 2001 ) documented, the introduction of managed care did little to change the amount of time that physicians and patients spent together in the examining room before that event. In fact, the amount of time that physicians spent in interaction with their patients was already minimal, reflecting a typical romantization of past social institutions rather than data on its actual operation. By 1999, health care scholars talked about the “backlash” against managed care which began as early as the mid-1990s and resulted in the weakening of many of its proposed strategies to limit choice of physicians, access to specialists, and cut costs. This “managed care lite” (Mechanic 2004 ) did provide a short-term control of costs which soon gave way to escalating fiscal pressure and further increases in the number of uninsured Americans. By the end of the decade, Swartz ( 1999 ) proclaimed the “death of managed care” and Vladeck ( 1999 ) announced that managed care had had its “Fifteen Minutes of Fame,” warning that “Big Fix” political solutions oversell, inevitably producing negative overreactions.

What will medicine, the health care system, and population health look like as a result of reform? At what point, and how, will we see the landscape of the US as truly different? Carol Boyer and I (2001) agree that the 1970s began the “end of unquestioned dominance,” but are we still “drifting” as Freidson ( 1970 ) warned, or are we reconstructing the American social contract between civil society and the “medical-industrial complex” (McKinlay 1974 )? How much of our view of “change” can or cannot be backed up by real data? After all, given larger claims of the “consumer backlash” or “consumer revolution” that would change the power balance, we find little significant decrease in the public’s view of the authority or expertise of physicians (Pescosolido et al. 2001 ). If there is a decrease in the confidence in American medicine, as Schlesinger ( 2002 ) claims, how much of this disillusionment is not exclusive to modern medicine, but rather reflects a generalized reaction to social institutions, developed in the modern, industrial era, to larger changes in contemporary society (Pescosolido and Rubin 2000 ). Rubin ( 1996 ) argued that the social and economic bases of modern society were “tarnished” in the early 1970s, marking a general turning point for social institutions in the face of diminished growth that had accompanied the post World War II era. To simply look at trends in the response to medicine and health care may miss the point of our general prescription to understand social life in context.

Community, professional, and the health care systems are in a state of constant change, in big and small ways, and claims of improvement or deterioration pale in comparison to actual research that contextualizes and documents societal level change (Pescosolido et al. 2010, on contentions and data on the dissipating stigma of mental illness in U.S. society). Such claims are important because they often come to have a life of their own, shaping priorities for research and treatment. But claims are research questions subject to empirical examination with social science data. Have we taken up Mills’ task to bring the “comprehensive,” “graceful,” “intricate,” and “many sided constructions” of sociology to changes in health, illness, and healing? Mechanic ( 1993 ) has repeatedly pointed out that sociologists are not well represented, doing the research on the organization of care that can provide both the subtle and dramatic, expected and ironic, impacts on the profession, the public, and health institutions. A sociological perspective, alone or integrated with others, is critical in marking and analyzing the impact on individuals, organizations, and groups of reform.

Putting Our Own House in Order: Time of Change from the Inside

There are, of course, many more important questions. At this historical moment of structural reform and reconsideration of research agendas, these appear to loom large. If medical sociologists are to attend to these or other critical issues in health, illness, and healing, a reflection on where we stand is essential. In fact, the logic of this volume was designed around the reflections of the editors, the contributors, and those who attended some of our early planning events.

Sociologists have regularly, if only occasionally, lamented our basic and internal barriers to progress – whether Lester Ward ( 1907 ) arguing that sociologists do not know enough biology to reject it or Alvin Gouldner ( 1970 ) alerting us to a brewing crisis in “Western sociology” because of a blind reliance on “objective” data (more below). Sociology weathered these critiques, changing sometimes in small ways and other times in large ways, but most often, noting the critique, integrating it in some way and to some extent in some corner of the discipline, and moving on. Sociology has survived functionalism and its dominant status attainment theory in the 1960s and 1970s, Marxism and the 1980s dominating return to historical sociology, and postmodernism’s declaration that everything is virtually unknowable except through one’s own personal experiences (in which Anthropology did not fare so well as a discipline; Pescosolido and Rubin 2000 ). Sociology is likely to both encounter and survive many more of these critiques; perhaps ironically because of the embedded Catholicism in its theory and method. While our richness lies in the breadth and inclusion, as noted above, this is also the source of confusion regarding sociology’s “brand.”

Decoding the Discipline and the Subfield: The Three Medical Sociologies

The looseness of our boundaries of inquiry and methods of intellectual mining is not without its costs. Recently, Pace and Middendorf ( 2004 ) argued that understanding the challenges in learning the heart of a discipline’s contribution requires asking a series of questions. This “decoding of the disciplines” seems just as relevant to reflecting on the research voice we use to address our “publics” (Burawoy 2005 ), whether students, ourselves, our colleagues in other disciplines, providers, policy makers, or the general population. While this approach places disciplines at the center of discussions, Pace and Middendorf ( 2004 , p. 4) note the critical but paradoxical requirement to consider the boundaries that we cross with other disciplines. Decoding first relies on the identification of “bottlenecks,” those places or issues where the end goals are not being met. They argue that, too often, this part of the process is skipped in favor of trying solutions which, while well meaning, miss the mark.

Following these directions, two often simultaneous concerns appear to echo through decades of writings on the discipline and the subfield. Mills ( 1959 ) warned of the “lazy safety of specialization” (Mills 1959 , p. 21). Gouldner ( 1970 ), Gans ( 1989 ), Burawoy ( 2005 ), and others have asked sociologists to be more engaged with civil society, more normative and less pristinely and scientifically aloof, and more willing to engage in activities that have a more immediate impact on the world. Bringing the two concerns of relevance and specialization to the same point on the intellectual map, Collins took up the concern of whether sociology “has lost its public impact or even its impulse to public action” ( 1986 , p. 1336), pointing to the proliferation of specialties as the source of internal, disciplinary boundary disputes, including pushing to the fringes those sociologists who took a more applied approach. While our subfields have allowed us to make the increasingly large professional association and annual meetings feel smaller, more personal and relevant, building up an “espirit de corps” ( 1986 , p. 1341) that facilitates the socialization of our new colleague, Collins sees the result that we “scarcely recognize the names of eminent practitioners in specialties other than our own…having become congeries of outsiders to each other” ( 1986 , p. 1340).

Medical sociology has not been immune to these centrifugal forces, arguing to the ASA that even if not formally the case, we “own” and caretake the Journal of Health and Social Behavior; revel in the realization that it has the third highest impact factor among journals in the discipline following our two flagship journals, the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology; or boast about our section membership hovering around the thousand mark. From its earliest days, Strauss ( 1957 ) articulated the fuzzy distinction between a sociology OF medicine and a sociology IN medicine which evoked the basic-applied distinction. We reported on concerns among our colleagues in medical sociology (Pescosolido and Kronenfeld 1995 ), with Levine ( 1995 ) suggesting that such territorial disputes trickle down, in part, from the larger discipline.

Not surprisingly, the second step in decoding follows from the identification of bottlenecks. In essence, knowing the landscape is key to traversing it successfully. Because Collins ( 1986 , p. 1355), in the end, finds “a pathological tendency to miss the point of what is happening in areas other than our own,” advocates that we work in two or three specialties, sequentially or simultaneously. Because Burawoy ( 2005 ) sees two dimensions that define our work (instrumental and reflexive), he argues for the legitimacy of four “brands” of sociological work which individuals can embrace simultaneously or sequentially. In medical sociology, Levine’s plea for “creative integration” draws together the insights of “structure seekers” and “meaning seekers” (Pearlin 1992 ). In fact, using a cartological metaphor, he called for us to become more “cognizant of the theoretical and methodological ‘tributaries’ that feed into the subfield that is medical sociology” (Levine 1995 , p. 2). In 1995, we argued for the integration of the mainstream and the subfield (Pescosolido and Kronenfeld 1995 ).

The Boundary Divisions that Matter: The Three Medical Sociologies

The terrain has changed because there have been deep-seated changes in the bedrock underlying medical sociology. The sources of these tectonic shifts lie in three interconnected but altered features of institutional supports. They are: (1) The demise of medical sociology training programs; (2) The growing presence of “other” sociologists in the sociology of health, illness, and healing; and (3) The increased presence of sociologists in medicine, public health, and related fields. Each comes with its own strengths and weakness, and together, they produce major impediments in building a cumulated set of findings from and for sociology in the areas of health, illness, and healing. Two dimensions are critical – training (What do we pass on in research on health, illness, and healing?) and audience (Who do we want to talk to?).

Our House and Corner of the Map: Medical Sociology by and for Medical Sociology

Post-WWII, the NIH, and particularly the NIMH, saw the development of subfields of social science within its purview. Training programs were funded in social psychology, medical sociology, and methodology, to name only a few. The demise of these training programs at sociology departments such as Yale, Wisconsin, and Indiana Universities resulted from narrowing NIH foci away from the broad concerns with stratification, institutions, medical sociology, social psychology to disease-specific problems beginning in the 1990s. But some training programs or major training emphases have survived (Rutgers, UCSF in the School of Nursing, Brandeis, Columbia), some have arisen in their wake (Indiana, Vanderbilt; Maryland), and some have fallen away (Wisconsin, Yale, UCLA).

This does not mean that there are not major medical sociologists elsewhere training individuals, nor does it mean that individuals are not doing medical sociology-relevant dissertations or research. However, it does mean two things. First, medical sociologists trained in these programs sometimes do not have the strong connection to the mainstream of the discipline, which is an aspect of Collins’ concerns. The success of our own journals and lines of research have produced a bit of insularity, pushing forward streams of research that neither draw from nor are engaged in dialog with the mainstream discussions. Whether this reflects a narrowing of the mainstream journals (see Pescosolido et al. 2007 ) or a narrowing of medical sociologists’ interests and reference groups is immaterial. Second, it also means that the findings of medical sociology that have been built over three generations have not become part of the larger stock of knowledge of the discipline and are sometimes absent in mainstream work that would profit from its insights (see below).

The main point is that the interchange between significant, relevant contributions in medical sociology and significant, relevant contributions in the mainstream disciplines and its other subfields is not happening. This decreases the accumulation of tools in the sociological toolbox, whether practitioners of our subfield, other subfields or the mainstream of the discipline.

Our Country: Mainstream Sociology with a Focus on Health, Illness, or Healing

Mills’ link between larger opportunities and challenges and individual behaviors is no less applicable to our research enterprise than it is to the phenomena we research. The availability of funding sources affects how sociologists are able to do their work; with sociology’s broad focus on social institutions, health becomes a focus of those who are concerned with general forces (e.g., inequality, organizations, and communities) than with the social indictors of outcomes. That is, health and health care is only one of a number of life chances affected by larger contextual forces. Dramatic instances of unequal life chances cannot help but draw the interests of sociologists. The increase in interdisciplinary research teams and the relative “wealth” of the NIH (e.g., versus the NSF) has brought more sociologists into research that addresses health, illness, and healing. All of these developments are good for the discipline and the subfield, as well as for the accumulation of social science and insights for the medical sciences.

Again, however, this focused attention by sociologists on areas traditionally defined as medical sociology is not without its costs. Specifically, it leads to a “quibble,” not necessarily an unimportant one, with this brand of research. As Jane McLeod so eloquently put it in her comments on the “Author Meets the Critics” Session at ASA in 2003, such work tends to suffer from “The Fatal Attraction Syndrome.” In other words, the insights of medical sociology research are ignored and “rediscovered.” Declaring the need for a sociological subfield of “social autopsy” disregards medical sociology’s line of research on social epidemiology that pioneered sociology’s focus on how issues of class, race, and gender shape mortality and morbidity (McLeod 2004 ).

This is not misrepresentation, but missed opportunity. Classic works embraced by medical sociology were penned by sociologists who did not appear to consider themselves “medical sociologists” (e.g., Erving Goffman, Everett Hughes). Rather, in contemporary research, the lack of training in and knowledge of medical sociology as a subfield yields a weaker picture of sociology’s contributions to our understanding of the social forces that shape health, illness, and healing. It may suggest to those both inside and outside the subfield that the discipline of sociology is not at the cutting edge.

Abandoning Home and Country for Richer, More Powerful Neighborhoods: Medical Sociologists Packed and Gone to Medicine, Public Health, and Policy

Differences in employment opportunities, either restricted in sociology or open in schools of medicine and public health, and the greater distribution and impact of scientific journals and dissemination outlets in those fields, create a third community on the sociological landscape. These are sociologists who tend to be very well trained in medical sociology and who bring a prominence to sociological ideas in health, illness, and healing. What can be the problem here? In fact, there is no immediate issue, because both sociologists and medical sociologists “find” much of their work. However, not all of their research can be fully integrated into the discipline without their presence, literally and figuratively, in sociology venues. The problem is that, in their geographic positions outside the discipline, they will not likely train the next generation of medical sociologists. In addition, many of these sociologists are precisely the ones who focus on health care organization and policy, a topic about which David Mechanic finds the subfield relatively weak in addressing. With the demise of strong medical sociology training programs in the top ranked departments, the two problems mentioned above are magnified. If the majority of sociologists tackling issues of health care organization and reform are outside our training spheres, this will likely exacerbate the shortage of a new generation of medical sociologists pursuing these topics. Avoiding the “loss” of their expertise to schools of public health, medicine and management alone, without a parallel emphasis in the subfield, requires effort on both sides, with each valuing the contributions and venues of the other.

Triangulating the Community Map to Develop a Blueprint for the Next Decade of Research

Rethinking communities and landscapes.

The analysis of these different locations and communities on the map of the sociology of health, illness, and healing guided our vision for this Handbook. It was meant to suggest, in Durkheimian fashion, that the whole of our contributions is greater than the sum of its parts. The sociology of health, illness, and healing is constituted and enriched by medical sociology, mainstream sociology, and sociological work coming out of public health, medicine, and policy analysis. Of course, the divisions are fuzzy; old divisions have been eliminated: and support for them is waning. Many who do research and teaching in these areas, cross the boundary lines easily and with grace.

For example, as Collins ( 1989 ) pointed out, in some corners of the sociological landscape, the debates over whether sociology is a “science” are futile. With “science” mistakenly equated with quantitative research, Collins contends that sociology, like other sciences, engages in the “formulation of generalized principles, organized into models of the underlying processes that generate the social world” (Collins 1989 , p. 1124). Similarly, to righteously equate medical sociology only with publication in sociological journals, but not publication in the general or medical journals, is equally problematic. The problem is how, in this era of proliferating opportunities for sociologists in diverse employment positions and in a wider range of journals, can we take advantage of all of these contributions and pass them on to the next generation? Sociological knowledge can advance, as Collins ( 1989 ) notes, with a coherence of theoretical conceptions across different areas and methods of research. Critique is good, and something that sociologists are extraordinarily proficient in; but this is useful only to the purpose of moving our understanding of the world forward.

This volume is a first step, we hope, in facilitating that coherence by explicitly bringing together these three different strains of medical sociology, by bringing their authors in contact with one another, with other medical sociologists, and with the next generation of researchers. That is, we have tried to take direct account of the potential contributions from diverse vantage points on the landscape of sociology. Specifically, the editors have sought out contributions from each of the three communities of sociological research on health, illness, and healing, including making an attempt, albeit a preliminary one, to escape the surface of American medical sociology. We ignore where on the intellectual and field/subfield/disciplinary map they come from. In this way, we hope to complement the Handbook of Medical Sociology , now in its 6th edition, which has served since 1963 to represent the cutting edge of the subfield.

Organizing by Elevation

We organize the insights along a vertically integrated map that carries the spirit of C.W. Mills forward in acknowledging individuals and contexts. In fact, in this first section, we step back even from the map of sociology so as not to ignore two facts – other disciplines aim to understand the same phenomena as medical sociology, further complicating our task of surveying existing contributions and gathering “leads;” and the U.S. brand of medical sociology, and sociology in general, tends to take one kind of perspective that may have different contours from the uniquely salient insights brought by medical sociologists in other countries. Thus, Rogers and Pilgrim, from the University of Manchester and University of Central Lancashire, respectively, follow this introduction by demarcating our relationship to other sociomedical disciplines from the UK landscape. Most importantly, taking the case of mental health, psychiatry, and sociology, they examine how these disciplines approach the same problems, how they construct them, and whether their contributions even matter to “science.” They look at boundary disputes and collaborations as they have played out in the UK, arguing that boundaries have been movable historically. Conflicts and separation followed early conversations and collaboration. Yet, they see signs of a return to more congenial shared intellectual space that stems from the movement to an integrated team approach in treatment and new substantive “identities” like health services research which situate individuals of different approaches onto common property.

Whether the world is more complex, as globalization theorists claim, or the world of sociology has embraced greater complexity than it had when Mills wrote, the next chapter outlines the Network Episode Model – Phase III as a set of multiple contexts that are considered simultaneously as we proceed. While sociologists have always acknowledged multiple contexts, the NEM separates out macro-contexts that intersect and now, can be researched simultaneously, whether through team ethnography (Burton 2007 ; Newman et al. 2004 ) or through Hierarchical Linear Modeling (Xie and Hannum 1996 ). We also go to and beneath the micro-foundations of macro-sociology that Collins ( 1981 ) addressed. While our focus may be on the “illness career,” there are levels below the individual which have to be reckoned with if we are to get past the old nature vs. nurture dichotomies. Thus, while macro levels can match the cartographic metaphor more-or-less literally of “place,” the sociological insight of vertical integration also guide us to more micro levels below the surface of the individual (e.g., their genetic inheritance). But at each level, the NEM argues that sociology must explicitly measure contextual factors and the connecting mechanisms of influence, calling for multi-method approaches which maximize the ability of empirical research to match “the promise.”

This section ends with a critical assessment of the theory of fundamental causality and suggests several forward-looking research directions. Freese and Lutfey argue that the SES-health association has to be unpacked in each time and place. Yet, they also see this as insufficient because it fails to tell us why this link transcends time and place. This widespread association has to be confronted with universalities, distinctions, and tensions. Ending with a focus on future research, they point to the potential of looking both in structure and “under the skin” using the interplay of quantitative and qualitative methods and offering three considerations for medical sociology to more strongly influence health policy.

Connecting Communities

This section deals with “places” above the health care system, looking to comparisons across countries (Beckfield and Olafsdottir; Ruggie); organized individuals taking on health and health care issues in the public (Brown and colleagues), policy spheres (Ruggie), or those institutions outside medicine (Aldigé, Medina and McCranie). We start with a look across countries, the area of comparative health systems, where Ruggie argues that there may be those who remain dubious about lessons that can be learned from cross-national analyses. She aims to convince them, admirably so, by pointing to the well-known paradox that was alluded to earlier about the high spending of resources and the low level of return in the U.S. She identifies persistent barriers in aims and means that result in inequitable health care in the U.S. Ruggie outlines and documents eight lessons about health care systems that the U.S. can learn from the experience of other nations. She ends by pointing to the ubiquitous relationship between poverty and poor health, in all countries, and the final lesson which supports the role that efforts outside the health care system have in improving health outcomes. Beckfield and Olafsdottir push this further, arguing that the welfare state offers a window into understanding how societies organize their economic, political, and cultural landscape. In turn, different forms of social organization are critical to understanding the causes of health, illness, and healing, and how these reverberate through the lives of individuals and societies. They lay out types and mechanisms through politics, health institutions, and lay culture, offering a set of propositions and hypotheses that, if examined empirically, will push our understandings of macro-level factors and perhaps unearth new suggestions for social change.

Remaining with the influence of civil society, Brown and his colleagues target the increasing influence of health activists and the health social movements that they populate. Arguing that such efforts have increased in number and broadened medicine’s concern to include issues of justice, poverty, and toxic work conditions, they provide theoretical and analytic concepts on relevant collective actions. The concepts they find to hold the most potential – empowerment, movement-driven medicalization and disempowerment, institutional political economy, and lay-professional relationships – connect to each of the “above the individual” NEM levels. Their ecosocial view connects communities, inequalities and disproportionate exposure to toxic conditions (e.g., environmental hazards and stressors) that translate into health disparities and that set a broader territory for the institution of medicine, as well as for medical sociology.

The final two pieces examine the role of institutions outside of medicine as they work with and against the aims of the profession, its ancillary occupations, and its organizations. Medina and McCranie reopen the classic claim that medicine “won” jurisdiction over deviance, having first “dibs” to define it as a problem of disease, eliminating the power of law or religion over societal response (Freidson 1970 ). Looking to the case of psychopathy, they reconsider the meaning of medicalization and the potential of thinking about “layers” of control as a better fit in the contemporary era. Ending with a call for recognizing and researching the multiplicity of institutional responsibility, this piece provides the perfect lead-in to Alidgé’s summary of the insights from sociology’s long but fairly sparse line of research on the intersection of legal and medical control of mental illness. Focusing on the “collision” that occurred in the wake of the civil rights movement, Aldigé details the complex sociohistorical forces that have shaped and reshaped the points of strain and support between two major institutions of social control of deviance.

Connecting to Medicine: The Profession and Its Organizations

With the dominance of the concept of medicalization (Zola 1972 ; Conrad 2005 ) and its dissemination into scientific and public life, we asked Clarke and Shim, who had offered an extension of the concept (biomedicalization; Clarke et al. 2003 ), to step back, review the current status of different approaches, update us on their own thinking (including addressing the critiques), and craft one possible future agenda. Entering into this assessment from the view of the sociology of science and technology, rather than pure medical sociology per se, they explore the potential for building bridges across the terrains of medical sociology, medical anthropology, medicine, and other neighboring terrains that share a concern with understanding how the boundaries of medical jurisdiction expand.

Hafferty and Castellani push past issues of medicalization and pursue medical sociology’s attention to and then abandonment of interest in the profession of medicine. Ironically, they contend that after medical sociologists documented and debate the rise of the profession to dominance, the subfield (and the larger discipline) has missed the take-up by medicine itself of issues of “professionalism” in light of its acknowledgement of the role of larger contextual factors defining its work. This change reopens the call for a sociological perspective and they provide a roadmap. Part of sociology’s turn away from issues of the institutional situation of medicine meant that there has been little attention to the fate of women as doctors since Lorber and Moore’s ( 2002 ) pioneering 1984 study. Finally, Boulis and Jacobs give us an update on the status of women in medicine. Taking us past even the insights of their comprehensive project ( 2008 ), providing the necessary background to understand where women are in the profession, they elaborate on whether medicine’s early sexist climate has changed, even if only around the edges. In the end, they conclude that progress has been slow at best; and, if and how the profession changes vis-á-vis gender has more to do with structural pressures than changing values.

The final two chapters in this section move to the organization of the health care system itself, with Caronna asking about the socio-historical logics that have shaped and continue to shape medicine in the U.S., while Kronenfeld explores the absence, for the most part, of medical sociologists in research on central policy questions relevant to health and health care. The former, as Caronna herself indicates, can illuminate the past and shape the future. By emphasizing the complex web of trust issues necessary to maintain a health care system, she guides us through the three logics of the past and asks whether we are entering a fourth, calling for more sociological research. Kronenfeld refutes the idea that policy studies belong to political science, staking sociology’s claim by surveying the past meaning and emphases of health care policy-making processes and noting a lacunae of broad system level analyses.

Connecting to the People: The Public as Patient and Powerful Force

This fourth section targets individuals outside the health care system as they interact with and affect it. Figert begins this journey through the community, asking whether or not medicalization theory has underplayed the potential of lay individuals in the medicalization process. The thread of reevaluating our theoretical concepts that revolve around professional power continues, with a reconsideration of Zola, Conrad, Clarke, and Epstein but expanding consideration to a more explicit role of expertise. This includes the expertise of the lay person as well as the expertise of professionals, noting that much current discussion debates the influence of the former. Tying into the earlier chapters by Brown and colleagues, she brings up how social movements may have shifted the landscape of medicine, and she reminds us of the formality of the classic formulations in Parsons’ patient role. This opens the path for May’s reformulation of Parsons’ “vision” of the physician–patient interaction. While recognizing that the organization of health care matters because it penetrates the clinical encounter, May targets the social relationship in the clinic as the place where their effects are mobilized and enacted. The arrival of “disease management” and “self-management” have become a routine part of “mundane medicine,” the care that comes with the greater prominence of chronic illness and disease. Digging further into the encounter, Heritage and Maynard review research from process, discourse, and conversational analyses that reveal in detail how the clinical encounter proceeds, what its key turning points are, and how there has been a clear and gradual movement to greater power balance between physicians and patients. Finally, Wright acknowledges that technological advances have widened the examination room, bringing with them greater expertise but also challenges from the public. With electronic records and publically available health information technology, Wright argues that sociologists should track the ramifications of these changes on trust, confidentiality, authority, and the social dynamics of how information is collected, managed, and used by both providers and their clients.

Connecting Personal and Cultural Systems

Much of the interest in the social sciences of late stems from the concern with health disparities. Alegría and her colleagues take this on in a holistic fashion, offering a larger framework within which to develop hypotheses and measures. Drawing from the notion of cumulative disadvantage across time and levels of organization, the Social Cultural Framework for Health Care Disparities serves to guide further and more integrated studies. They set the stage for more specific concerns. Among these, areas that continue to attract research attention are race and gender. In a review of the black–white differences in health, Jackson and Cummings point to the paradox of the Black middle class. Counterintuitive to the SES-health gradient, they provide evidence that the Black middle class does not fare better in health status than the White lower class, and end by suggesting that accumulated network capital, limited by residential segregation, is ripe for future research. In a similar vein, Read and Gorman turn their attention to gender. They give an overview of what we know about male–female differences in mortality and morbidity, theories used to explain these, and three challenges that remain in the gendered profile of health – immigration, the life course, and co-morbidities between mental and physical health. To assist in future research, the final note in this section involves methods for unraveling the mechanisms that underlie many of the associations that have been documented. Pairing sociologists who come from different methodological corners of the sociological landscape, Watkins, Swidler and Biruk describe and illustrate the use of “hearsay ethnography.” Relying on individuals in the communities they study to hear and record what their social network ties discuss, they show the advantages over traditional survey and ethnographic methods in gathering data on “meaning” in everyday life.

Connecting to Dynamics: The Health and Illness Career

While intimately tied to the directions we take in this volume, much of what comes before this point does not deal directly with the dynamics of health and health care outcomes and the forces that shape them. There is no better way to inject dynamics into the sociology of health, illness, and healing than to draw both inspiration and insight from the life course perspective. Pavalko and Willson do just that by reviewing what has been integrated into our research and what remains less well developed. In particular, they point to two areas that would profit from further attention – individual agency within constraints and how historical and institutional changes intersect with life ­trajectories. Following in this tradition, Carpentier and Bernard take on the developments in health care utilization research that have embraced temporality, social structure, multilevel effects, and culture. Using the network metaphor, they stress complexity in theory and methods that study trajectories and lay out directions to push this approach further.

Connecting the Individual and the Body

Sanders and Rogers connect the chronic illness career to potential improvements in treatment and health care policy. Specifically, they consider how processes of disruption, uncertainty, and adaptation are at work in shaping trajectories in chronic illness and illness management. They make the transition to the individually orientated factors by coupling the forces of motivation, innovation, and social networks with the social and cultural significance of the body. Lively and Smith focus more deeply on issues of identity regarding both the public self and the private self. They explore aspects of social psychological theories of identity that have not been fully utilized in the sociology of health, illness, and healing, particularly the development of positive illness identities. Conley dives deeper into the biological aspects of the body, arguing that social science and genetics can be integrated but must be done with caution. He reviews traditional genetics approaches, expressing apprehension about the endogeneity problem inherent in many studies and the current limits in mapping gene–gene interactions. He suggests that social scientists should pair with genetic researchers in a sequence of studies that use multiple methods to first identify a genetic or social effect as truly exogenous so that we do not follow the “mining” and “fishing” approaches commonly used in genetic and epigenetic research.

Perry ends the volume where we began it – with the call for diverse disciplinary approaches, expressing a central concern for collaboration without cooptation. With an acceptance of the increasing complexity of both social and genetic factors, Perry reviews and dismisses typical approaches like the chain model and provides a primer on basic places where sociologists can start to think about how social life matters in life and death. In particular, taking advantage of “the promise” may come from medical sociologists who use developmental models with an eye to social construction.

Wrapping Up

For those who contributed to this volume, as well as for the editors, this is a start, a beginning to continuing to bring the strengths of medical sociology forward. We have many to thank for their contributions and time spent. The staff at the Indiana Consortium for Mental Health Services Research, particularly Mary Hannah, shepherded this volume through, seeing the project from the beginning to end. Howard Kaplan’s determination to see a volume on Health, Illness and Healing in the Sociology series was steadfast and Teresa Krauss’ patient persistence was welcome.

“…the individual can understand his own experience and gauge his own fate only by locating himself within his period….he can know his own chances in life only by becoming aware of those of all individuals in his circumstances.” C.W. Mills (1959, p. 5)

Contributor Information

Bernice A. Pescosolido, Phone: 812855 3841, Fax: 812856 5713, Email: ude.anaidni@losocsep .

Jack K. Martin, Email: ude.anaidni@nitramkj .

Jane D. McLeod, Phone: 812855 3841, Fax: 812856 5713, Email: ude.anaidni@doelcmj .

Anne Rogers, Phone: +44 (0)161 275 7601, Email: [email protected] .

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Medical sociology.

Medical sociology is a subdiscipline of sociology that studies the social causes and consequences of health and illness (Cockerham 2004). Major areas of investigation include the social aspects of health and disease, the social behavior of health care workers and the people who utilize their services, the social functions of health organizations and institutions, the social pat terns of health services, the relationship of health care delivery systems to other social systems, and health policy. What makes medical sociology important is the significant role social factors play in determining the health of individuals, groups, and the larger society. Social conditions and situations not only cause illness, but they also help prevent it.

Talcott Parsons

The post parsons era, period of maturity: 1970–2000, the present.

In recognition of the broad impact of social factors on health, medical sociology is sometimes referred to as ‘‘health sociology’’ or the ‘‘sociology of health.’’ However, the traditional name ‘‘medical sociology’’ persists because it is preferred by many of its practitioners. Medical sociologists comprise one of the largest groups of sociologists in the world. They have employment opportunities both within and outside of academia. Medical sociologists work not only in university sociology departments, medical, nursing, and public health schools and various other health related professional schools, but also in research organizations and government agencies.

Medical sociology is a relatively new socio logical specialty. It came of age in the late 1940s and early 1950s in an intellectual climate far different from sociology’s traditional specialties. Specialties like theory, social stratification, urbanization, social change, and religion had direct roots to nineteenth century European social thought. These specialties were grounded in classical theory with major works by the sub discipline’s founding figures. However, sociology’s early theorists ignored medicine because it was not an institution shaping society. An exception is Emile Durkheim’s Suicide (1951 [1897]), which is sometimes claimed as the first major work in the field. Medical sociology appeared in strength only in the mid twentieth century as an applied field in which sociologists could produce knowledge useful in medical practice and developing public policy in health matters.

Moreover, physicians, not sociologists, produced much of the earliest literature in medical sociology. In the United States, John Shaw Billings, organizer of the National Library of Medicine and compiler of the Index Medicus, wrote about hygiene and sociology in 1879; Charles McIntire defined medical sociology in 1894; Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to graduate from an American medical school, published a collection of essays on medical sociology in 1902, as did James Warbasse in 1909 (Bloom 2002). The most important contribution came from Lawrence Henderson, a physician who taught a sociology course at Harvard in the 1930s. Henderson espoused structural functionalist theory and published a 1935 work on the patient–physician relationship as a social system. Henderson’s most direct influence on medical sociology was through Talcott Parsons, one of his students who became a leading figure in sociology (Bloom 2002). The first sociologist to publish extensively on medical sociology was Bernhard Stern, who wrote historical accounts of the role of medicine in society from the late 1920s until the early 1940s.

Medical sociology evolved as a specialty in sociology in response to funding agencies and policymakers after World War II who viewed it as an applied field that could produce knowledge for use in medical practice, public health campaigns, and health policy formulation. Ample funding for research to help solve the health problems of industrial society and the welfare state in the West during the post World War II era stimulated its growth. In 1949, for example, the Russell Sage Foundation in the United States funded a program to improve the utilization of social science in medical practice that resulted in books on social science and medicine and the role of sociology in public health. Particularly important was the establishment of the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in the United States that funded and promoted cooperative projects between sociologists and physicians. A significant result of such cooperation was the publication in 1958 of Social Class and Mental Illness: A Community Study by August Hollingshead (a sociologist) and Frederick Redlich (a psychiatrist). This landmark study produced important evidence that social factors were correlated with different types of mental disorders and the manner in which people received psychiatric care. The book remains the seminal study of the relationship between mental disorder and social class. This study also played a key role in the debate during the 1960s leading to the establishment of community mental health centers in the United States.

At the beginning of medical sociology’s expansion, many people in the field had tenuous roots in mainstream sociology and an orientation toward applied rather than theoretical work. Some had no training in medical sociology whatsoever. Many had been attracted to the subdiscipline because of the availability of jobs and funding for research. This situation led Robert Straus (1957) to suggest that medical sociology had become divided into two areas: sociology in medicine and sociology of medicine. The sociologist in medicine performed applied research and analysis primarily motivated by a medical problem rather than a sociological problem. Sociologists in medicine typically worked in medical, nursing, public health or similar professional schools, public health agencies, or health organizations like CDC and WHO. Sociologists of medicine primarily worked in academic sociology departments and engaged in research and analysis of health from a socio logical perspective.

The division in orientation created problems in the United States. Medical sociologists in universities were in a stronger position to produce work that satisfied sociologists as good sociology. Sociologists in medical institutions had the advantage of participation in medicine as well as research opportunities unavailable to those outside clinical settings. Disagreement developed between the two groups over whose work was the most important. What resolved this situation over time was a general evolution in medical sociology that saw both applied and theoretical work emerge on the part of medical sociologists in all settings. Medical sociologists in universities responded to funding requests for applied research, while some of their counter parts in medical institutions, like Anselm Strauss, produced important theoretical work.

A related problem in the early development of medical sociology was its potential to become dependent on medicine for its direction and research orientation. However, this did not hap pen, as medical sociologists adopted an independent course and made the practice of medicine one of its major subjects of inquiry, including its core relationships with patients and the organizational structure of health care delivery systems (Bloom 2002). Medical sociologists, in turn, brought their own topics to the study of health such as social stress, health lifestyles, and the social determinants of disease.

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A decisive event took place in medical sociology in 1951 that provided a theoretical direction to a formerly applied field. This was the appearance of Parsons’s The Social System. This book, written to explain a complex structural functionalist model of society, contained Parsons’s concept of the sick role. Parsons had become the best known sociologist in the world and having a theorist of his stature provide the first major theory in medical sociology called attention to the young subdiscipline – particularly among academic sociologists. Anything he published attracted interest. Not only was Parsons’s concept of the sick role a distinctly sociological analysis of sickness, but it was widely believed by many sociologists at the time that Parsons was charting a future course for all of sociology through his theoretical approach. This did not happen. Nevertheless, Parsons brought medical sociology intellectual recognition that it needed in its early development by endowing it with theory. Moreover, following Parsons, other leading sociologists of the time such as Robert Merton and Erving Goffman published work in medical sociology that further promoted the academic legitimacy of the field.

The next major area of research after Parsons developed his sick role concept was medical education. Merton and his colleagues (1957) extended the structural functionalist mode of analysis to the socialization of medical students, with Renee Fox’s paper on training for uncertainty ranking as a major contribution. Four years later, Howard Becker and his associates published Boys in White (1961), a study of medical school socialization conducted from a symbolic interactionist perspective. This study became a sociological classic and was important for both its theoretical and methodological con tent. The techniques in participant observation provided a basis for the seminal work on death and dying and subsequent innovations in theory and methods by Barney Glaser and Anselm Strauss (1965, 1967).

With the introduction of symbolic interaction into a field that had previously been dominated by structural functionalism, medical sociology became a significant arena of debate between two of sociology’s major theoretical schools. This debate helped stimulate a virtual flood of publications in medical sociology in the 1960s. Moreover, the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA) was formed in 1959 and grew to become one of the largest and most active ASA sections. American influence was also important in founding Research Committee 15 (Health Sociology) of the International Sociological Association in 1967 (Bloom 2002). The Medical Sociology Group of the British Sociological Association (BSA) was organized in 1964 and became the largest specialty group in the BSA, with its own annual conference.

In 1966 the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, founded in 1960, became an official ASA publication, making medical sociology one of the few sociological subdisciplines publishing its own journal under ASA auspices. In the meantime, in Great Britain, a new journal, Social Science and Medicine, was founded in 1967 and became an especially important journal for medical sociologists throughout the world. The growing literature in medical sociology also led to the publication of textbooks. The first textbook was Norman Hawkins’s Medical Sociology (1958), but the early leaders were the first editions of books by David Mechanic (1968) and Rodney Coe (1970). Howard Free man, Sol Levine, and Leo Reeder likewise made an important contribution by publishing the Handbook of Medical Sociology, which contained summary essays on major topics by leading medical sociologists. The first edition appeared in 1963 and the fifth edition in 2000, edited by Chloe Bird, Peter Conrad, and Allen Fremont.

During the 1960s, the symbolic interaction ist perspective temporarily dominated a significant portion of the literature. One feature of this domination was the numerous studies conducted with reference to labeling theory and the mental patient experience. Sociologists expanded their work on mental health to include studies of stigma, stress, families coping with mental disorder, and other areas of practical and theoretical relevance. For example, Goff man’s Asylums (1961), a study of life in a mental hospital, presented his concept of ‘‘total institutions’’ that stands as a significant sociological statement about social life in an externally controlled environment. An abundant literature emerged at this time that established the sociology of mental disorder as a major subfield within medical sociology (Cockerham 2006).

Between 1970 and 2000 medical sociology emerged as a mature sociological subdiscipline. This period was marked by the publication of two especially important books, Eliot Friedson’s Professional Dominance (1970) and Paul Starr’s The Social Transformation of American Medicine (1982). Friedson formulated his influential ‘‘professional dominance’’ theory to account for an unprecedented level of professional control by physicians over health care delivery that was true at the time but no longer exists. Starr’s book won the Pulitzer Prize and countered Friedson’s thesis by examining the decline in status and professional power of the medical profession as large corporate health care delivery systems oriented toward profit effectively entered an unregulated medical market. Donald Light (1993) subsequently used the term ‘‘countervailing power’’ to show how the medical profession was but one of many powerful groups in society – the state, employers, health insurance companies, patients, pharmaceutical and other companies providing medical products – maneuvering to fulfill its interests in health care.

Another major work was Bryan Turner’s Body and Society (1984), which initiated the sociological debate on this topic. Theoretical developments concerning the sociological understanding of the control, use, and phenomenological experience of the body, including emotions, followed. Much of this work has been carried out in Great Britain and features social constructionism as its theoretical foundation. Social constructionism has its origins in the work of the French social theorist Michel Foucault and takes the view that knowledge about the body, health, and illness reflects subjective, historically specific human concerns and is subject to change and reinterpretation. Other areas in which British medical sociologists have excelled include studies of medical practice, emotions, and the experience of illness. Medical sociology also became a major socio logical specialty in Finland, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Israel, and began to emerge in Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1990s after the collapse of communism. In the meantime, the European Society for Health and Medical Sociology was formed in 1983 and hosts a biannual conference for European medical sociologists. In Japan, the Japanese Society for Medical Sociology was established in 1974 and, since 1990, has published an annual review of work in the field. Elsewhere in Asia, medical sociology is especially active in Singapore, Thailand, and India, and is beginning to appear in China. In Africa, medical sociology is strongest in South Africa. Medical sociology is also an important field in Latin America, and because of its special Latin character, many practitioners prefer to publish their work in books and journals in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, and Chile (Castro 2000).

From the 1970s through the 1990s, medical sociology flourished as it attracted large numbers of practitioners in both academic and applied settings and sponsored an explosion of publications based upon empirical research. Major areas of investigation included stress, the medicalization of deviance, mental health, inequality and class differences in health, health care utilization, managed care and other organizational changes, AIDS, and women’s health and gender. Several books, edited collections of readings, and textbooks appeared. The leading reader was edited by Peter Conrad and Rochelle Kern in 1981 and is now in a seventh edition (2005), with Conrad the sole editor. The leading textbook was William Cockerham’s Medical Sociology, first published in 1978 and due to appear in a tenth edition in 2007. Another major medical sociology journal, the Sociology of Health and Illness, was started in Britain in 1978, as was a new journal, Health, in 1999.

However, the success of medical sociology also brought problems in the 1980s. Research funding opportunities lessened and the field faced serious competition for existing resources with health economics, health psychology, medical anthropology, health services research, and public health. Not only did these fields adopt sociological research methods in the forms of social surveys, participation observation, and focus groups, some also employed medical sociologists in large numbers. While these developments were positive in many ways, the distinctiveness of medical sociology as a unique subdiscipline was nevertheless challenged as other fields moved into similar areas of research. Furthermore, some of the medical sociology programs at leading American universities had declined or disappeared over time as practitioners retired or were hired away. Yet the overall situation for medical sociology was positive as the job market remained good, almost all graduate programs in sociology offered a specialization in medical sociology, and sociologists were on the faculties of most medical schools in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe (Bloom 2002).

The 1990s saw medical sociology move closer to its parent discipline of sociology. This was seen in a number of areas, with medical socio logical work appearing more frequently in general sociology journals and the increasing application of sociological theory to the analysis of health problems. The American Journal of Sociology published a special issue on medical sociology in 1992, and papers on health related topics are not unusual in the American Sociological Review. While medical sociology drew closer to sociology, sociology in turn moved closer to medical sociology as the field remains one of the largest and most robust sociological specialties.

Ultimately, what allows medical sociology to retain its unique character is (1) its utilization and mastery of sociological theory in the study of health and (2) the sociological perspective that accounts for collective causes and outcomes of health problems and issues. No other field is able to bring these skills to health related research and analysis. Today it can be said that medical sociology produces literature intended to inform medicine and policymakers, but research in the field is also grounded in examining health related situations that inform sociology as well. Medical sociology no longer functions as a field whose ties to the mother discipline are tenuous, nor has it evolved as an enterprise subject to medical control. It now works most often with medicine in the form of a partner and, in some cases, an objective critic. Moreover, medical sociology owes more to medicine than to sociology for its origin and initial financial support, so the relationship that has evolved is essentially supportive. As medical sociology continues on its present course, it is likely to emerge as one of sociology’s core specialties as the pursuit of health increasingly becomes important in everyday social life.

References:

• Becker, H., Greer, B., Hughes, E., & Strauss, A. (1961) Boys in White: Student Culture in Medical School. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
• Bird, C., Conrad, P., & Fremont, A. (2000) Hand book of Medical Sociology, 5th edn. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
• Bloom, S. (2002) The Word as Scalpel: A History of Medical Sociology. Oxford University Press, New York.
• Castro, R. (2000) Medical Sociology in Mexico. In: Cockerham, W. (Ed.), The Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology. Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 214-32.
• Cockerham, W. (2004) Medical Sociology, 9th edn. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
• Cockerham, W. (2006) Sociology of Mental Disorder, 7th edn. Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ.
• Coe, R. (1970) Sociology of Medicine. McGraw-Hill, New York.
• Conrad, P. (Ed.) (2005) The Sociology of Health and Illness, 7th edn. Worth, New York.
• Durkheim, E. (1951 [1897]) Suicide. Free Press, New York.
• Friedson, E. (1970) Professional Dominance. Aldine, Chicago.
• Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (1965) Awareness of Dying. Aldine, Chicago.
• Glaser, B. & Strauss, A. (1967) The Discovery of Grounded Theory. Aldine, Chicago.
• Goffman, E. (1961) Asylums. Doubleday Anchor, Garden City, NY.
• Hawkins, N. (1958) Medical Sociology. Thomas, Springfield, IL.
• Hollingshead, A. & Redlich, F. (1958) Social Class and Mental Illness: A Community Study. Wiley, New York.
• Light, D. (1993) Countervailing Power: The Changing Character of the Medical Profession in the United States. In: Hafferty, F. & McKinlay, J. (Eds.), The Changing Medical Profession. Oxford University Press, New York, pp. 69-79.
• Mechanic, D. (1968) Medical Sociology. Free Press, New York.
• Merton, R., Reader, G., & Kendall, P. (1957) The Student Physician. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA.
• Parsons, T. (1951) The Social System. Free Press, Glencoe, IL.
• Starr, P. (1982) The Social Transformation of American Medicine. Basic Books, New York.
• Straus, R. (1957) The Nature and Status of Medical Sociology. American Sociological Review 22: 200-4.
• Turner, B. (1984) Body and Society. Blackwell, Oxford.

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Medical Sociology

Journals and books, statistics and websites, follow medical sociology, research strategies and tips, ask a question.

Key Medical Sociology Journals

Click on "Full Text Access" for a list of links of places to get these journals. You can then search within journals for your keywords, or browse through issues.

• Sociology of Health and Illness
• Social Science & Medicine
• Health Sociology Review
• Social Theory and Health
• Critical Public Health
• Journal of Health and Social Behaviour
• International Journal of Health Services
• American Journal of Preventive Medicine
• New England Journal of Medicine
• Public Health
• Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine

These journals, and other journals and articles about Medical Sociology, can be found in the following databases.

• Sociological Abstracts This link opens in a new window This is your best bet for this course! Provides abstracts of journal articles and citations to book reviews drawn from over 1,700 serials publications, and also provides abstracts of books, book chapters, dissertations, and conference papers. Updated monthly.
• Social Sciences Citation Index This link opens in a new window Tip: Check off "Science Citation Index Expanded" to also search the scientific half of the database - this will help find articles on the "medical" side of "medical sociology." Current and retrospective bibliographic information, author abstracts, and cited references found in over 1,700 of the world's leading scholarly social sciences journals covering more than 50 disciplines. They also cover individually selected, relevant items from approximately 3,300 of the world's leading science and technology journals.

Provides indexing and abstracts for over 1,719 periodicals in the nursing, biomedicine, alternative/complementary medicine and allied health disciplines. Full text coverage includes nearly 520 journals, plus legal cases, drug records and clinical trials. Updated monthly.

Scholarly collection, spans nearly every area of academic study. Updated daily.

JSTOR represents over 600 journals in the arts, humanities and social sciences. NOTE: Does not provide access to current issues of periodicals. JSTOR provides archival access to journals and access to journals varies from publisher to publisher. In most cases two to five years plus the current calendar year are excluded.

Medical Sociology Books and Articles

• Theoretical Approaches
• Topical Overviews
• Handbooks and Encyclopedias
• Canadian Context
• Intercultural
• Article: Methodology of Social Sciences: Positivism, Anti-Positivism and the Phenomenological Mediation by Koshy Tharakan (2006).

• Toward a sociological theory of religion and health by Anthony Blasi Call Number: BL65 .M4 T678 2011 Publication Date: 2011

• Ethnicity, health and health care: understanding diversity, tackling disadvantage by Waqar I.U. Ahmad and Hannah Bradby Call Number: RA563 .M56 E852 2008 Publication Date: 2008

COVID-19 Research

COVID-19 research is rapidly evolving as the pandemic continues. It is important to get information from reputable sources. This is a starting list of publishers and databases gathering research on COVID-19. This is not an exhaustive list; there is more information out there. Remember to evaluate any research that you read, especially considering where the information is from, especially if you are finding the information from social media.

Research tip: in Discover's advanced search, search for "COVID-19" and check off the discipline that you are researching in to narrow your results. For example, if you want to find COVID-19 sociological articles, check off "sociology."

• WHO: Global Research Database for COVID-19 This pages has a database on research about COVID-19. You can search in this database. You can also find other resources from major publishers on this page.
• Government of Canada: Epidemiological data on COVID-19 Data products about the epidemiological, social and economic dimensions of the outbreak. Includes datasets, dashboards, statistics, analyses, trends, charts and maps. Also includes a list of locations where people may have been exposed to the virus.
• American Sociology Association: COVID-19 Resources for Sociologists

This box last updated: September 16, 2020.

Data and Statistics

• BC Population Data
• Canadian Institute for Health Information Comprehensive Canadian health information and statistics.
• CANSIM CANSIM is Statistics Canada's key socioeconomic database. Updated daily, CANSIM provides fast and easy access to a large range of the latest statistics available in Canada. Provides access to the Canadian Censuses, the Agricultural Censuses, Aboriginal Peoples Survey, environmental data, Elections Canada data, and the time series in CANSIM (Canadian Socio-economic Information Management System).
• Health Statistics
• First Nations Information Governance Centre Data on Indigenous health
• Government of Canada, Health Inequalities Data Tool
• Data and Statistics TRU Library guide about data and statistics.

Associations

• American Sociological Association: Section on Medical Sociology News and information about medical sociology. If a member of ASA, can join this section.
• Medical Sociology (MedSoc) Study Group
• Anisnabe Kekendazone: Network Environment for Aboriginal Health Research (AK-NEAHR)
• The Centre for Critical Qualitative Health Research (CQ)
• List of other Associations (from CQ)
• Center for Genetics and Society (Biotechnology focus)
• Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness
• Chapter 19. The Sociology of the Body: Health and Medicine Chapter from an Open Textbook (Introduction to Sociology, 2nd Canadian Edition) about medical sociology.
• ScienceDirect Topic: Medical Sociology Overview of the subject pulled from a variety of reliable sources. more... less... Requires TRU login.
• Cost of Living
• World Health Organization (WHO)

Listservs and Newsletters

Listservs have news, announcements, and discussions on a topic. Both listservs and newsletters are valuable sources of new information.

• Listserv: Medical Sociology News You can subscribe to receive email notices or go to this page to see all entries.
• Newsletter: ASA Medical Sociology Section

Social Media Feeds

Don't discredit information found online! Associations, journals, and researchers may share research, opinion pieces, and updates related to their field. Social media can help you keep up with current news and events in an academic area of study.

Here are some accounts to get you started:

• American Sociological Association (Twitter)
• Canadian Sociological Association (Twitter)
• Medical Sociology Online (Twitter)
• Australian Sociological Association Health Thematic Group (Twitter)

Journal Alerts

There are three main ways to get updated when a journal publishes new articles.

1. Alerts directly from the journal: many journals have an option to get email alerts directly from their homepage. Look for a link called "Table of Content Alerts," "Get Content Alerts," "Set up Alerts," etc.

2. Through Discover:

• In advanced search, search for the journal title in quotation marks with "SO Journal Title/Source" selected from the dropdown menu.
• Click "Share" on the top right of the search results.
• Sign in (you will need to create a free EBSCOhost account--this doesn't have to be with your TRU email address, and it will not be linked to your TRU network account)
• Choose your settings and click save
• Tip: you can do this with any search in Discover to keep up to date on a topic.

3. Through Sociological Abstracts : Some sociology journals aren't available through Discover. This method is almost exactly the same as setting up alerts through Discover.

• In advanced search, search for the journal title in quotation marks with "Publication title - PUB" selected from the dropdown.
• Click "save search/alert" from the top right of search results.
• Create your alert.

Evaluating Articles

• Evaluating Resources Recognize high quality resources from the library and web sources.

You may be asked to find articles that are from sociology journals. Searching in a sociology database, like Sociological Abstracts , is a good place to get started, but not every journal in that database is sociological. (There are many journals that focus on social work or psychology, for example).

Here are some tips for evaluating journals:

• Sociology of Health and Illness - a sociology journal
• American Journal of Community Psychology - a psychology journal
• Journals about sociology may use different key phrases, such as "social interactions," "social structure," or "society."

There is not a simple checkbox you can select to limit yourself to sociology journals, so make sure to give yourself time to think critically about your sources.

Reading Articles

Tips to get started

• Read sections like the introduction, results, and discussion to help you decide if the article will actually help you with your paper. If it is not relevant, don't waste your time!
• Markup the article, either by printing it out or using editing tools in PDF viewers. Highlight important concepts and make your own notes for later.
• Write down the key ideas from the article and their supporting evidence.
• Check the reference list of useful articles for additional readings that may be useful.

Further Resources on Reading Academic Articles

• Practical Tips for Reading Sociology
• Tips for Reading Sociology
• Reading Quantitative Research Articles

Advanced Searching

• Research Help and Planning Your Research This guide has a bit of everything: getting started with your topic, advanced search techniques, evaluating resources, and more!

When Using Discover

"Discover" is the main library search system. It searches through most of what TRU Library has. While it can be helpful to view results from other disciplines, such as Education or Psychology, use Advanced Search then choose the discipline Sociology to help you find mostly sociology sources.

Other Databases

• A list of recommended sociology databases

Tip : Start with Sociological Abstracts : these articles are not in Discover!

Research Resources

• TRU Library Events & Workshops Calendar Calendar listing current workshop offerings at the TRU library
• Research Help and Planning your Research This guide has a bit of everything: getting started with your topic, advanced search techniques, evaluating resources, and more!
• Citation Management This guide provides an overview of citation management and its benefits, and information about getting started with either RefWorks, Mendeley, or Zotero.
• Following a Citation Trail Discover how to find a book from a reading list or a bibliography/reference list.

Interlibrary Loans

If you come across a book or article that you would like to use for your assignment, but the library doesn't have it, never fear! Fill out an interlibrary loan form and we will find the resource from another library and send it to you. Find the form under Interlibrary Loans on the page "Online Forms" below.

• Online Forms Find the right form to submit an ILL request, book a group study room, request a book purchase, and more!
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70 Amazing Sociology Research Topics – Use Them Today!

We compiled these top sociology research paper topics to give students a comprehensive list of sociology-related issues. Read on for more.

Sociology refers to the study of people and their relationships within society. It delves into a range of subjects such as

• Communities
• Secularization
• Law among others

The internet is awash with a plethora of sociology research topics. Students, therefore, find it challenging to choose the right one(s) for their assignment. However, our experts handpicked 70 of the topmost sociology research topics for college students. All you need to do is scroll down, pick an item that best suits your interests, and get your homework going! No hustle.

Getting Started With Sociology Research Topics

To start with, sociology topics for research should:

Be objective Be coherent such that they do not break cause and effect bonds Have an impetus towards the direction of the research

Therefore, having excellent sociology research proposal topics is an art one needs to master. Are you terrified because you are not good at this yet? Our interesting sociology research topics will help calm your nerves down.

So, what are some good sociology research topics? Keep on reading.

Gender and Sexuality Sociology Research Topics

The following list of sociological topics will help crank up your paper:

• How does society treat women?
• Are men and women the same under the law?
• What are the gender stereotypes in the media?
• Why are male presidents most preferred over women?
• Discuss the rise of the Feminist Revolution and its significance
• Do transgender people have a place in society today?
• Why are most nurses of the female gender?
• Social interactions: Male versus female treatment
• Homosexuality and lesbianism: How does society view these two?
• Is feminism overrated?

Sociology Papers Topics on Religion

Writing about spirituality presents some good sociology research questions such as:

• How people view the phenomenon of a higher spiritual being
• The concept of worship in traditional society
• Why do Hindus hold the cow in high esteem?
• The history of different Christian denominations
• The influence of secularism on religion
• Should women preach in churches, mosques, or temples?
• Who do the pagans believe in as their supreme authority?
• Effects and causes of religious affiliations
• Why are most countries Christian dominated?
• Discussion on how Buddhists worship

Sociology Research Questions on Food

There are endless sociology topics to research on food, including:

• How are vegetarians treated?
• How does genetically modified food to the natural one?
• Are pesticides on farms killing humans instead of pests?
• What is the role of hydroponics on food supply and availability?
• Does the coronavirus virus spread through handling unclean food?
• Are food packaging messages necessary?
• What is the cause of food inequity in the world?
• Is obesity a result of the food we eat?
• How have eating habits changed over time?
• Why do people prefer fast food joints over dine in restaurants?

Medical Sociology Research Topics

Use these medical ideas to write a winning sociology research paper:

• Who caused the coronavirus? Man or nature?
• The relationship between modern lifestyle public health
• Discuss professional diseases and their effects
• How aging changes the physical and mental state
• How long does it take to discover a vaccine, and why?
• Is society to blame for the spread of contagious diseases?
• What is the role of Humanitarian missions in healthcare?
• How the treatment of pregnant women is different from others
• Are genetic engineering and cloning ethical?
• How does society look at HIV/AIDS patients?

Environmental Sociology Research Topics

• What is the place of agro-food systems today?
• Exploring how environmentalism is a social movement
• How does society perceive environmental problems?
• What is the origin of human-induced ecological decline?
• How population dynamics relates to health and the environment
• The role of elites in ecological pollution
• Dealing with the inequitable social distribution of environmental hazards
• How do socially disadvantaged populations come to experience higher exposures?
• Is man to blame for global warming?
• The economic impact of environmental pollution

Sociology of the Family Research Topics

• How do single parents manage their families?
• Why do children emulate their parent’s behaviors?
• Why most children prefer their mothers over fathers
• Marriage among different races
• The rise of teenage mothers and its implication
• How does divorce affect the children?
• How families with soldiers, doctors, or marines survive without them
• The conventional family structure
• Discuss the uniqueness of LGBT families
• The role of nannies in parenting children

Easy Sociology Research Topics

• Impact of social media on individuals
• How the media portrays women and why
• Living with transgender individuals in the neighborhood
• The evolving social stratification
• How social activity leads to the development of scientific knowledge.
• Is it possible to achieve social stability?
• Discuss the forces that influence individual behavior in society
• The influence of face to face interactions
• Human factors influencing site selection
• How to improve social and living conditions

With these and more samples, you can be sure of good sociology research topics for your paper. Of course, the crucial end goal is tip-top grades. A carefully thought out sociological research question can make you stand out from your peers.

On top of the numerous examples, we also offer professional writing help for sociology research papers. Get one at an affordable rate now!

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70 Catchy Sociology Research Paper Topics That Really Stand Out

If you are taking sociology in college, you will agree that it is one of the fascinating subjects because it involves dealing with things that define and affect people, such as cultures, customs, and how people’s ways of life change.

Despite being an enthralling subject, many students find it challenging to pick the best sociology topics. To help you address the problem, we have picked the best 70 sociology topics for research that you can use. So, use them as they are or tweak them a little to reflect your preference.

Sociology Research Topics on Teenagers and Children

When growing up, childhood is the most carefree period of life, but it does not mean that kids do not have issues. However, these issues change as they become teenagers, and you can focus on them to formulate your sociological research question for your paper. If you are interested in children and teenagers, here is a list of sociological topics to consider:

• What is the influence of sports on the mental health of teenagers?
• Is sexual education good for children?
• What is the best way to deal with bullying in schools?
• Exploring the main reasons why kids do not have stereotypes.
• Should we give religious education priority over academic knowledge?
• Self-identification in teenagers: What are the causes?
• How does homeschooling impact children’s socialization abilities?
• Should adults consider teenagers as equals?
• Teenage suicides: What are the leading causes?
• Teachers or parents: Who has a bigger role in preventing early pregnancies?

Sociology Papers Topics on Social Media

Social media has emerged as the new method of communication, both at the personal and corporate levels. As more social media platforms, such as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook become the new norm, here are some related sociology research topics for college students.

• Can we consider social media as a reliable source of information?
• Using social media to improve the hiring process in companies.
• Understanding the role of influencers on social media users.
• Comparing the use of Instagram and Facebook in education.
• Online relationships: Can they be considered real?
• Cyberbullying on social media.
• If social media is outlawed today, would our lives be better?
• How can we use social media to help change people’s behavior?
• Social media development over time: How will it affect education in the future?
• Social media development: What is the effect on the development of civil societies?

Good Sociology Research Topics in Marriage and Family

We are all part of a family, and it plays a great impact on who we become later in life. For students who want to explore issues related to families, here are some examples of interesting sociology research topics that can get them top grades.

How should we define a family?

Traditional gender roles taken by men: Would they be better handled by women?

How has marriage changed in the UK?

Exploring the implications of divorce on children.

Are there negative impacts of kids adopted by families of different ethnicities?

Why have the cases of single parenthood increased so much in the last three decades?

Is the institution of marriage outdated?

Should we allow teens to get access to birth control without the permission of their guardians?

Should the government be allowed to decide who can get married?

Reviewing the implications for kids being adopted by LGBT couples.

Understanding the benefits of being married but choosing to stay childless.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of following the traditional gender roles in the family today?

Should all parents be required to take parenting classes before having children?

Do you support the use of the one-child policy in China to reduce population?

Easy Sociology Research Topics

Like we mentioned earlier, sociology is a broad subject, but it is crucial to select the research ideas carefully to avoid getting bored midway. So, if you like to keep things simple and you are wondering, “ What are some good sociology research topics,” here are some good suggestions.

• Why do more people prefer online communication today?
• Is anonymity when using the internet important?
• What are the best techniques for training kids with deviant behavior?
• For how long should people date before getting married?
• Exploring the differences between generations X and Z.
• The benefits of letting the elderly interact with children.
• What are the negative implications of intergenerational marriage?
• Exploring the differences between spiritualism and religion.
• Why do some city administrations only allow some businesses and disallow others in their jurisdictions?

Environmental Sociology Research Topics

People’s behaviors, policies, economic levels, and levels of education, among other aspects have huge implications on the environment. So, what areas of the environment and related topics do you want to explore? Here are some great topic samples to consider.

• An analysis of domestic inequality and carbon emissions.
• Is environmental activism alone enough in addressing the problem of global pollution?
• Exploring the latest trends in environmental justice: A case study of the United States.
• Food system localization: Comparing the Pros and Cons.

What implications does recycling for environmental reasons have on an individual’s social well-being?

• Why everyone has a role to play in addressing the problem of climate change.
• What are the main causes and consequences of global warming?
• Facing the truth: Can the global society address the problem of global warming?
• Why conservation should be taught from an early stage of a child development.

Sociology Research Proposal Topics

If you are required to work on a research project, and the proposal needs to get the nod from your lecturer before proceeding, here are some great topics to consider:

• How do stereotypes of age impact employment?
• Comparing liberal feminism and radical feminism.
• What age group is at a higher risk of getting involved in deviant behavior?
• Do women have fewer professional opportunities compared to men?
• How are sexuality and gender viewed by students in private versus public schools?
• Is it more important to be popular or successful in school today?
• Playing video games for more than 10 hours every week: What impact does it have on students’ learning abilities?
• Should we make medicinal marijuana legal?

Good Sociology Research Questions in Culture and Cultural Biases

Some of the hottest research questions in sociology about culture and cultural biases include:

• Are the policies and laws protecting free speech in society enough?
• What are the best solutions for reducing population growth in the globe?
• Should we allow prescription drug companies to make direct advertisements to consumers?
• What are the biases that exist against obese people?
• Should we have legal penalties for people who use racial slurs?
• How is gender discrimination in the workplace perpetrated?
• What role does feminism play in American politics in the 21 st century?
• What are the differences between labor immigration in Europe and the US?
• Should the drinking age be lowered?
• What are some of the best solutions for addressing homegrown terrorism in the United States?

Once You Have Sociology Research Topics, what Next?

If you want to get top grades, the first step is selecting excellent research paper topics. However, whether you have selected environmental, family, or medical sociology research topics, the bigger task is actually ahead, and you should consider seeking writing help from our professionals . We have writing experts who can handle every topic in sociology, be it a sociological research question or sociology of the family research topics. You can never go wrong with a pro on your side!

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Medical Sociology Research Paper

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With a formal institutional history that dates back more than 50 years, the academic discipline of medical/health sociology is both rich and varied. As one of the largest subfields in sociology, it has explored a long list of health care issues, including the physician-patient relationship, illness behavior, stress and coping, the social distribution of health, medical professionalism, health care policy, and public health. It also has drawn on and made excellent use of a wide range of sociological theories, including structural functionalism, symbolic interactionism, feminism, and postmodernism. Finally, it has intersected with a variety of other social sciences, including medical anthropology, health psychology, and epidemiology, to produce an important literature that has helped to improve the practice of medicine and the health and well-being of people worldwide.

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In light of this richness and diversity, we seek first to identify resources that will enable readers to have a deeper appreciation for the field of medical/health sociology. Second, we highlight ways of thinking about medicine and health care from a sociological perspective, which, in turn, may enhance our understanding and possibly assist in managing what has become society’s most complex social institution.

This research paper is organized into three sections. First, we briefly explore medical sociology’s historical roots. Second, we address the issue of what makes medical sociology sociological. That is, we assess how sociology contributes to our understanding of health and illness and how medical sociology contributes to the general sociological discourse. Third, we examine medical sociology in terms of the major sociological theories it draws upon to study health care issues.

Throughout this research paper (and per above), we will use the terms “medical sociology,” “health sociology,” and “sociology of health and illness” interchangeably or in some combination (e.g., medical/health sociology). Over the years, there has been considerable debate about what to label academic sociology’s foray into the world of medicine, health, and illness. Herein, it is important only to note the debate.

Historical Roots

Medical sociology can trace its intellectual lineage to the late 1800s. In the waning decades of the nineteenth century, two nascent disciplines, sociology and allopathic medicine, began to cross paths in small but significant ways. For allopathic medicine, this time period witnessed the beginnings of medicine’s ongoing attempts to consolidate its professional powers and social legitimacy. Meanwhile, sociology (the term being first coined by Auguste Comte in 1838) was beginning to emerge as a distinct discipline. In the United States, for example, Herbert Spencer’s The Principles of Sociology (three volumes, 1876–1896) was a seminal publication, along with the establishment of the first American sociology course (“Elements of Sociology” at the University of Kansas, Lawrence, in 1890), and the founding of the first department of sociology (at the University of Chicago in 1892 by Albion Small—who three years later also would launch the first sociology journal, American Journal of Sociology [ AJS ], in 1895).

Examples of work from this time period that formally link “medicine” and “sociology” include two articles by Charles McIntire (1915, 1991) (“The Importance of the Study of Medical Sociology”—first published in 1894 and reprinted in Sociological Practice —and “The Expanse of Sociologic Medicine”) along with two key books, the first by Elizabeth Blackwell (1902) ( Essays in Medical Sociology ) and the second by James P. Warbasse (1909) ( Medical Sociology: A Series of Observations Touching Upon the Sociology of Health and the Relations of Medicine ). The second McIntire article is of particular interest because of where it appeared—in the Journal of Sociologic Medicine, which was published not by a sociology association but by the American Academy of Medicine. This journal, with its distinctive sociological title and medical “residence,” existed for a scant four years (1915–1919)  before both the parent and the journal disappeared from view. The American Public Health Association hosted a similar sociologic offspring—its “Section of Sociology”—for a slightly longer period of time (1909–1921), but with a similar demise (Bloom 2002). It would take another quarter century before the next medical sociology journal ( Journal of Health and Human Behavior —see below) appeared.

The initial timing and brief duration of these links between medicine and sociology reflected a much broader transformation taking place within allopathic medicine and between medicine and society, as both rushed to affirm the “scientific side” of medicine (Starr 1982; Stevens 1971). As medicine grew in clinical effectiveness and organizational complexity, however, the social-psychological and behavioral sides of medicine began to atrophy—with instruction, research, and principles relegated to “secondorder” medical fields such as psychiatry and public health. While scattered “sociology of medicine” articles would continue to appear (albeit infrequently) in medical journals between 1920 and 1950 (Lawrence J. Henderson’s [1935] “Physician and patient as a social system” being a notable example), the few that did surface would have a far greater impact on sociology than on medicine (one famous “benefactor” of the Henderson article, for example, was Talcott Parsons). In 1960, E. Gartly Jaco published what would become the first substantive disciplinary journal in medical sociology, the Journal of Health & Human Behavior ( JHHB ). In the spring of 1967, the American Sociological Association (ASA) took JHHB under its organizational wing where it was renamed the Journal of Health and Social Behavior ( JHSB ). Eliot Freidson was the first editor.

This same year also marked the first issue of Social Science & Medicine ( SS&M ), with its distinctively international and multidisciplinary social science focus. By the early 1970s, the medical sociology section of the British Sociological Association had established its own organizational footprint, and in 1979 published its own “medical sociology” journal ( Sociology of Health & Illness ) . Like SS&M, it too would have an international and multidisciplinary focus (Jobling 1979).

During the 1950s and 1960s, the field of medical sociology underwent an explosive period of growth—before peaking in the early 1970s (Bloom 2002; Day 1981). During these two decades, the field enjoyed considerable academic excitement and success, including what today might be considered a lavish amount of grant support, both from private foundations and the federal government. At its peak in the early 1970s, for example, the National Institute of Mental Health subcommittee for social science training was awarding 1,500 graduate student stipends per year—80 percent of which went to sociology departments. The number of stipends was well in excess of what was needed to support medical sociology graduate students— and thus the entire field of sociology benefited from this philanthropic and federal largess (Bloom 2002). Even the founding of the medical sociology section itself and the ASA’s decision to adopt the JHSB were underwritten by outside funding.

Membership in the new ASA section (established in 1959) was mercurial. In less than a year, the medical sociology section grew to 561 members. By 1964, membership had soared to nearly 900 (which, not incidentally, is close to the section’s membership today). In less than a half dozen years, the field went from publishing introductions to the field (Anderson 1952; Hall 1951) to summative reviews (one notable example is Eliot Freidson’s [1961] “The Sociology of Medicine: A Trend Report and Bibliography,” published as a special issue in Current Sociology ).

By the mid-1970s, however, there were signs of trouble (Bloom 2002; Day 1981). Established funding streams had dried up and were not replaced by alternative resources. Section membership had plateaued and coverage of medical/health issues in flagship sociology journals, such as the AJS and the American Sociological Review, became more infrequent. Meanwhile, colleges and universities were undergoing their own upheavals. Faced with considerable financial pressures, schools looked to trim programs, and sociology was high on a number of lists. As one small but indicative example, Yale University’s Department of Sociology, which housed the first medical sociology program in the United States, decided in the 1990s to eliminate that program.

The 1980s and 1990s were a difficult time for allopathic medicine as well. The rise of managed care, the commodification of medical services, and the discovery of medicine by Wall Street and corporate America during the “go-go” years between 1985 and 1997 had earth-shattering implications for the future of medicine as an autonomous profession.

The 1970s through early 1990s also were a time of vigorous debates within academic sociology about the fate and future of allopathic medicine as a profession (Hafferty and Light 1995; Hafferty and Wolinsky 1991). Beginning with Eliot Freidson’s (1970a, 1970b) transformative Profession of Medicine and Professional Dominance, a number of distinguished medical sociologists in the United States (Mark Field, David Frankford, Marie Haug, Eliot Krause, Donald Light, John McKinlay, Fredric Wolinsky) and elsewhere (David Coburn, Julio Frenk, Rudolf Klein, Magali Larson, Gerald Larkin, Elianne Riska, Evan Willis) began to debate the changing fortunes of organized medicine’s status as a profession (Hafferty and McKinlay 1993). Once again medicine and sociology crossed paths. It is worth noting, however, that by the time organized medicine began to mount a campaign to reestablish its professional status and stature, sociologists had moved on to other debates (Castellani and Hafferty 2006).

Issues of Identity and Identification

From its very conception as an academic entity, medical sociology has been plagued by issues of identity (self) and of identification (others). On the one hand, the study of medical and health issues offered sociology great challenges and opportunities (Fox 1985). On the other hand, these same opportunities had the potential to strip sociology of its unique perspective (Bloom 1986). One hallmark of this tension is the now 50-year-old debate about whether the ASA ’s section should be named “medical sociology” or whether it should sport some other marquee such as “health sociology” or the “sociology of health and illness.” Many of these tensions are reflected in Robert Straus’s (1957) famous distinction between a sociology of and a sociology in medicine. The problem is one of placement and perspective. The former ( of ) reflects situations where sociologists maintain their disciplinary base (an academic sociology department for example) and train their sociological lens on fields of inquiry (such as medicine) for the purpose of answering sociological questions. The latter ( in ) connotes a state of affairs where sociologists work, for example, in a medical setting and employ sociological concepts and perspectives to solve problems that are defined as such by medicine. Sociology of medicine thus became considered (by academically based sociologists) as more in keeping with the sociological tradition, with the presumption being that those operating from a sociology in medicine ran the risk of being co-opted or at least corrupted by the medical perspective. More recently, there have been efforts to “retire” this distinction by insisting that sociology has passed through its of / in phase and has graduated into a sociology with medicine (Levine 1987). This is wishful thinking. Organized medicine remains one of the most powerful social institutions in modern times—forces of deprofessionalization notwithstanding. Furthermore, medicine has little incentive (then or now) to welcome sociology to its table unless it feels that sociology can help solve issues or problems— as defined by medicine (and not sociology). Under such circumstances(andexpectations),anyworkingrelationshipbetween sociology and medicine involves considerable potential for sociology to undergo disciplinary co-option. Sociologists who work in medical settings must be particularly sensitive to these issues. Often they function betwixt and between, receiving little respect from physicians or from their academically based peers who consider their “wayward” colleges to be too “applied.” Whatever the particulars, organized medicine retains considerable institutional power and social legitimacy within today’s society. Medicine has been able to establish its knowledge, skills, and culture as the everyday, taken-for-granted order of things, and this is what makes the medical perspective so potentially corrupting.

Medical Sociology and Medical Education

The move to introduce medical sociology into the medical school and nursing curriculum played an important role in the discipline’s evolution as an institutional entity. The first beachhead came in 1959, when Robert Straus founded the first Department of Behavioral Science at the University of Kentucky. Straus also helped to found, in 1970, the discipline’s first professional association (Association for the Behavioral Sciences and Medical Education). For Straus, “behavioral science” (note the singular form) reflected the intersection of medical sociology, medical anthropology, and medical psychology—and therefore represented a unique and transcending social science discipline. The field quickly established a presence within a number (but not all) of medical schools during the 1960s and 1970s, particularly in those 40+ community medical schools that were being founded during the 1970s and 1980s. Nonetheless, the field’s fundamental identity within the basic science and clinical arms of the medical school was—and would remain—marginal and suspect.

As departments and programs of behavioral science(s) began to grow in number and size, once supportive allies such as psychiatry and community medicine began to mount counteroffensives to reestablish control over domains of medical knowledge and instruction that once had been their exclusive jurisdiction. Today, there are only three formally labeled “Departments of Behavioral Science(s)” in the United States: the University of Kentucky College of Medicine, the University of Minnesota Medical School– Duluth Campus, and Northeastern Ohio Universities College of Medicine (NEOUCOM).

Another indicator that points to the rather persistent marginal status for the behavioral sciences (including medical sociology) within medicine and medical education is reflected across the numerous national committees, commissions, and reports (dating back to the 1920s) that have emphasized the necessary role of the social sciences in medical education (Christakis 1995)—yet with little change over these decades in actual institutional and instructional practices by medical schools. Bloom (1986) famously likened this ongoing state of affairs to “reform without change.” Straus’s sociology of and in medicine also raises the question of whether there are two (or more) medical sociologies. One way to answer this question is to ask whether the medical sociology taught/presented to medical and/or other health science students, for example, is the same medical sociology presented to undergraduate and graduate medical sociology majors. Although we do not pretend to answer the question here, there is a sufficiently large body of relevant material to at least raise the question and suggest that there are, indeed, differences. Books by Thomas (2003) and Taylor and Field (2003), along with articles written for medical journals depicting sociology (Bilkey 1996; Chard, Lilford, and Gardiner 1999; Chard, Lilford, and Court 1997; Chaska 1977; Petersdorf and Feinstein 1981; Ruderman 1981) are a good place to begin any such inquiry.

Finally, we note that for some sociologists and sociology programs, the label applied is something to be courted, not condemned. There is a vigorous movement within organized medical sociology (and sociology in general) to make sociology training more explicitly “applied” and or “clinical” in focus—with the goal to make students more “job ready” or employable postgraduation (Dolch 1990; Gabelko and McBride 1991; Haney, Zahn, and Howard 1983; Hoppe and Barr 1990; Sengstock 2001).

Medical Sociology as Sociology: Or, What Makes Medical Sociology Sociological?

Any new or emergent subfield must draw on its parent discipline for theoretical, conceptual, and methodological sustenance. Thus, when Talcott Parsons (1951) began to craft his now famous Chapter 10 of The Social System (“Social Structure and Dynamic Process: The Case of Modern Medical Practice”), he drew on core aspects of sociological theory (e.g., the sociology of deviance, role theory, etc.) to reframe issues of health and sickness from a functionalist perspective. Similarly, Eliot Freidson (1970a, 1970b) drew on the sociology of knowledge and the framing of social order as the product of ongoing human production (Berger and Luckman, 1966) to help shape his analytical approach to medical work, language, and knowledge. As a final example, two of the most famous early studies of medical education, Robert Merton, Leo Reeder, and Patricia Kendall’s (1957) The Student Physician and Howard Becker et al.’s (1961) Boys in White were less studies of medical education per se than they were efforts to test competing theories of social action, including adult socialization. The Merton camp advocated a structural functionalist perspective and the Becker camp a symbolic interactionist perspective. In short, the core issue was sociological theory, not occupational training, and therefore both studies were a sociology of rather than a sociology in. Medical education was “simply” the backdrop or battlefield (Hafferty 2000).

It seems reasonably self-evident that “medical sociology” must involve the application of sociological knowledge and concepts to issues of health and illness. It is distinct in its approach because it considers the import that social and structural factors have on the disease and illness processes as well as on the organization and delivery of health care. This includes factors such as culture (e.g., values, beliefs, normative expectations), organizational processes (e.g., the bureaucracy of hospitals), politics (e.g., health care policy, political ideology), economics (e.g., capitalism, the stock market, the costs of health care), and microlevel processes such as socialization, identity formation, and group process.

All of this conceptual blocking notwithstanding, what we have remains too limiting a definition. It is not enough that someone labeled a “sociologist” employs sociological concepts to answer questions if the questions themselves are defined/framed in a nonsociological manner. Asking sociologists to help solve the “problem of patient compliance” proposes that the sociologist take on a medical definition of the situation (where any deviation from “doctor’s orders” is considered the responsibility and fault of the patient). Lost in the shuffle of who gets to define the topics and terms is the fact that physicians and patients interact within a highly complex system involving medicine and society, along with broader social issues such as the role of experts in society or the social management of risk.

There is another question here as well. Where and how does medical sociology contribute to the greater sociological enterprise? More specifically, where do we find evidence that medical sociologists/sociology directly contributes to the advancement of sociological theory or methods? The question is not rhetorical. Much of Anselm Strauss’s early work on grounded theory (Glaser and Strauss 1967) came via research on the topics of death and dying (Glaser and Strauss 1965, 1968; Strauss and Glaser 1970). On the other hand, while it is clear that Erving Goffman’s (1986) work on stigma has been widely employed within medical/health sociology, and while it is equally clear that the concept has great applicability to the sociology of chronic illness and the sociology of disability/ disability studies, it is less clear how studies in these areas have contributed to the conceptual development of stigma as a sociological concept and therefore as a tool that can be applied by social scientists studying issues other than medicine.

Finally, we have a third question related to the multiple medical sociology question raised above. It is not always self-evident how the work of medical sociology differs from that of medical anthropology, medical economics, health policy, medical epidemiology, and public health. As such, is medical sociology itself a unique and singular perspective? Asked in a more sociological manner, Can we disentangle “medical sociology” from the broader social context in which it functions? To answer this question, we will briefly explore differences between U.S. and British medical sociology.

The Case of British Medical Sociology

In addition to the possibility that medical (nursing, health science, etc.) students receive a different medical sociology than what is taught to sociology graduate students, there appears to be considerable (and important) differences between British and American medical sociology. We begin by noting that the parent disciplines (British and American sociology) themselves harbor key differences (Abbott 2000). British sociology is more theoretically inclined, more accepting of qualitative research strategies, and more critical of “abstract empiricism” (not only with respect to data analysis but also with respect to the very definition of data itself). There also are differences in theoretical constructs. British sociology, for example, has a strong tradition focusing on the “sociology of the body” (e.g., “constructing the body” or “gender, sexuality, and the body”) (Shilling 2004; Turner 1992, 1996)—something much less visible in U.S. sociology. There also are differences in the use of analytic concepts—the British use of social class and the American use of socioeconomic status being one example (Halsey 2004; Reid 1979; Stacey and Homans 1978). Finally, we can point to significant differences between the U.S. and British health care systems. The American system is more capitalistic and “market oriented,” while the British have a national health system organized and controlled by the state. Indeed, there are those who believe that while the British have a coherent and organized health care “system,” the American arrangement of competing capital interest is, at best, a “nonsystem system.”

All these differences are reflected in the focus and tone of British versus American medical/health sociology. Comparisons between White (2002) and U.S. textbooks such as Conrad (2005) and/or Weitz (2003) show differences in content and context. Chapter titles in White (e.g., “Foucault and the Sociology of Medical Knowledge,” “Postmodernity, Epidemiology and Neo-Liberalism,” and “Materialist Approaches to the Sociology of Health”) have no parallel in Conrad or Weitz.

We continue to see these same differences in the medical/health sociology taught to British medical versus American medical students. One major difference is the use of medical/health sociology textbooks. Not only is there a market for such textbooks within British medical (and/or other health science) education, but the volumes themselves are formally identified as health and/or medical sociology text (Scambler 2003; Taylor and Field 2003; Thomas 2003). There are no such textbooks in the United States. Furthermore, in the rare instance when textbooks are used in the United States, the operative label used is “behavioral science” (Sahler and Carr 2003). Even here, most “behavioral science” textbooks sold in the United States are “board review” (Fadem 2001) or biostatistics (Gravetter and Wallnau 2003) books.

Similar differences can be found with other types of medical curriculum materials (Cook 2004; Iphofen and Poland 1997; Kitto 2004; Turner 1990). The article by Cook (2004), for example, describes course materials for health professional students built around “the concepts of differentiation, commodification, and rationalization (associated with the work of Émile Durkheim, Karl Marx, and Max Weber, respectively),” with these materials providing “a useful conceptual ‘launching pad’ for understanding key changes to medicine and doctor-patient relationships since pre-modern times” (p. 87). Similarly, the article by Kitto (2004) describes a new “health, knowledge, and society” curriculum for medicine, nursing, and health sciences students built around “aspects of C. Wright Mills’ sociological imagination to teach 1st year medical students the importance of analysing the social aspects of health and illness in medical practice” (p. 74). Course materials with titles or rationales such as these simply do not exist within U.S. medical education. In the United States, behavioral sciences faculty are urged by students (via course evaluations) and administration (also driven by student evaluations) to be “relevant,” “applied,” “practical,” “case based,” and/or “patient centered”—all antonyms for the dreaded terms “theory” or “theoretical” (which are interpreted by U.S. medical students as having little to no applicability to issues of patient care). Moreover, even if we were to sweep away the stigmatizing presence of theoretical materials, the fact remains that medical students (along with many basic science faculty) consider the entire field of behavioral/social science to be “soft” and “subjective” when compared with the remaining basic sciences (pathology, pharmacology, molecular and cell biology, etc.) and clinical coursework. Within U.S. medical education circles, data demonstrating that U.S. medical students learn better when course materials are “patient oriented” rather than “theoretically oriented” (Leigh and Reiser 1986) have great face validity.

Theoretical Passages through Medical Sociology

As William Cockerham (2001) explains in his essay “Medical Sociology and Sociological Theory,” because medical sociology is an applied field of study, there is a tendency to think that it lacks a theoretical rationale for the various topics it studies. Such conclusions are false. As we explained above, the general aim of medical sociology (whether the sociologist be Talcott Parsons or a newly hired junior faculty person or research associate) is to apply sociological theory and concepts to the topics of health and health care. This is true of both the sociology of and in medicine (Bloom 2002; Gerhardt 1989).

Obviously, an important part of what medical sociologists “know”—independent of what they study—is sociological theory. As each cohort of medical sociologists is trained, they learn not only the older canon of sociological theory—what has gone on before them—but also the latest theoretical advances. One hallmark of any academic discipline is how each new cohort of scientists goes about applying this “new-found” theoretical knowledge to what they seek to examine and understand. This, in turn, advances the field. A survey of the medical sociology literature suggests just this process to be the case (Gerhardt 1989).

While such an unfolding of the field certainly represents advancement, this progression, for medical sociology, has not been linear, nor has it been entirely cumulative. There also is much debate within medical sociology about the validity of applying various sociological theories to the fields of medicine and health care— one such example being the case of postmodernism (Cockerham 2001). Moreover, there are a variety of rifts in the field over the epistemological assumptions behind many of these theories. These rifts concern, for example, the validity of deductive reasoning and the linear model of statistics, the reliability of qualitative methodology and scientific representation, the appropriateness of various sociological units of analysis—micro, meso, macro—and the authority of medical and sociological knowledge (Annandale 1998; Levine 1995; Link 2003; Williams 2001). Finally, it appears that while different theories are useful in some areas, are less appropriate in others. Postmodernism, for example, is a useful way to critique the power of medical knowledge. It is, however, not much help in studying social stress or the social distribution of health and illness.

Despite the complexity and nuances of these differences—yet in many ways because of them— medical sociology is a theoretically rich and diverse field of study. Our purpose in this section is to provide a quick overview of this richness by surveying some of the more important sociological theories that have been employed by medical sociologists over the past 50 years. While no strict chronology is implied in our review, it is historically accurate to label the first four theoretical orientations as “classical” sociological theory, while the remaining three are more recent in both origin and application within the field.

The first major theoretical passage through medical sociology is structural functionalism. Grounded in the work of Talcott Parsons (1951), this theory takes a systems view of health and illness, focusing on the functional role that social institutions such as medicine play in maintaining the well-being of society. Despite the controversy that ensued during the 1960s and 1970s regarding the legitimacy of this perspective, it retains considerable influence and relevance (Williams 2005). Not only did the presence of Parsons (as probably the most famous sociologist of his time) and the utility of structural functionalism help to establish the study of health and illness as a worthy sociological endeavor, this lineague and apparent applicability also helped to develop several of the field’s most important areas of research: the patient-physician relationship, the sick role (which later became known as illness behavior), the medicalization of deviance, and medical professionalism.

The second major theoretical passage is symbolic interactionism. Unlike strucutural functionalism, this perspective focuses more on the “microlevel” social processes of health and health care and the important role that patients and health care providers play in the creation, development, and transformation of the larger health care systems of which they are a part. Through the work of Anselm Strauss, Erving Goffman, Howard Becker, Norman Denzin, and Kathy Charmaz (to name a few), this perspective has examined such important topics as how medical schools socialize physicians, how patients learn the role of being chronically or mentally ill, how physicians and nurses use the tools of medicine and the medical model to impose on patients the normative expectations of society, how patients and their families manage the emotional labor of “illness,” and how patients and health care providers negotiate the “politics” of daily medical encounters (Charmaz and Paterniti 1999; Gerhardt 1989). Like structural functionalism, symbolic interaction theory predates the origins of modern-day medical sociology. For example, and as noted above, the two most famous studies of medical student socialization, the Merton and Becker studies, built their respective investigations around this theoretical divide.

The third major theoretical passage is conflict theory. Building on the work of Karl Marx and Max Weber and represented by more contemporary conflict theorists such as Randall Collins (Collins and Makowsky 2004), this perspective demonstrates how a society’s health and health care system is the result of a complex network of conflicting and competing aims and interests based on differences in income, gender, ethnicity, occupation, education, political affiliation, and so on (Navarro 2002). Conflict theory has been an important addition to the field of medical sociology because it has provided a muchneeded theoretical framework for the sociology of medicine, which has enabled medical sociologists to study such important topics as the social distribution of health and illness, inequalities in the health care delivery system, the politics of health care policy, the economics of health insurance, and the failures of medicine to meet the health care needs of society (Gerhardt 1989; Henderson et al. 1997; Navarro 2002).

The fourth major theoretical perspective is feminism (Annandale 2003; Bury 1995; Clarke and Olesen 1999; Harkess 2000). Drawing on a variety of theories within sociology, including symbolic interaction and conflict theory, this perspective is concerned with the role that patriarchy, sexism, and gender play in the health and wellbeing of women. This perspective has examined important issues such as the medicalization of the female body, the quality of health care women receive, and the role that patriarchy has played in the construction of medical knowledge.

The fifth major theoretical framework is poststructuralism. Based on the work of the French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, this perspective examines how people use the discourses of medicine, psychiatry, and science to care for and control themselves and others (Petersen and Bunton 1997). Like Parsons before him, Foucault (1980, 1987, 1988) examined many of the key topics in medical sociology, such as the history of madness, the medicalization of deviance, the birth of the modern medical clinic, and the various ways in which health care providers and everyday people use medical knowledge—think of, for example, the self-help literature, medical diets, and plastic surgery—to master and control the body.

The sixth major theoretical passage is postmodernism. Building on the work of Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Derrida (Best and Kellner 1991, 2001; Fox 1994), this perspective makes two radical assertions. First, it asserts that medicine and biomedical science are nothing more than discourses; powerful textual strategies that use a variety of binaries to control such important issues as (a) who is a medical expert (physicians versus traditional healers), (b) what constitutes valid medical knowledge (biology versus sociology), and (c) what sits outside “normal” ideas about health and health care (allopathic medicine versus alternative medicine). Second, it asserts that the dominating discourses of medicine and biomedical science need to be deconstructed and re-created to form new ways of thinking about health and health care, ways that are better able to address the postindustrial, globally interdependent, culturally fragmented, and nonlinear world in which we now live.

While postmodernism has provided an effective critique of modern medicine, critics point out that its wholesale dismissal of medicine and science as little more than normative ways of thinking oftentimes appears to “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” While modern medicine and biomedical science are hierarchically ordered and still decidedly patriarchal, it hardly seems reasonable to issue a blanket dismissal of biomedicine as little more than dominating textual strategies, given its role in improving the health of populations throughout the world. It is for this reason that postmodernism has had a limited presence, impact, and utility in medical sociology.

The seventh major theoretical passage is multiculturalism (Lupton 2003; White 2002). Drawing on the theoretical perspectives of symbolic interactionism, conflict, feminism, poststructuralism, and postmodernism, this perspective has three major foci. The first is to examine the negative impact that racism, sexism, homophobia, ethnocentrism, and cultural intolerance have on the health and well-being of people. The second is to examine the ways in which culture affects the practice of medicine and biomedical science. The third examines the ways in which culture affects the health behaviors of different populations and, in turn, their use of contemporary Western health care (Lupton 2003; White 2002).

Two Substantive Theories

Two important substantive theories have played a major role in medical sociology: (1) stress and coping (Cockerham 2004; Mirowsky and Ross 2003) and (2) professionalism (Hafferty and Light 1995; Hafferty and McKinlay 1993). Stress and coping is situated at the intersection of sociological traditions such as symbolic interactionism, conflict theory, and the sociology of work. The sociological study on stress and coping itself has two foci: (1) the role that certain social factors (e.g., chronic poverty, lifestyle, health behaviors, occupation, gender, etc.) play in the creation and exacerbation of stress and conversely, (2) the role that other social factors (e.g., marital status, strength of kinship networks, financial stability) play in assuaging stress.

The sociological study of professions has a longer and more storied history. While the sociological study of professions and occupations date back to the turn of the century (Carr-Saunders and Wilson 1928), modern-day discussions of medical professionalism are linked to Parsons and his conception of medical dominance and autonomy as necessary/functional for the well-being of both patients and society. Since Parsons, medical sociology has been engaged in an extended (and critical) examination of American medicine’s claim to be a profession and the extent to which medicine has been able to maintain and live up to this claim. More specifically, medical sociology has examined the impact that medicine’s professional status has on the lives of physicians and patients, as well as also on the entire issue of how work is organized relative to free market and bureaucratic organizational forms (Freidson 2001). According to the sociological analysis of medicine as a profession, medicine has gone through four major transformations: professional reform and rise (1890s–1930s), professional dominance (1940s–1960s), deprofessionalization (1970s–1990s), and organized medicine’s efforts to reclaim and redefine its professional status (1990s–present) (Castellani and Hafferty 2006). As an aside, both traditional and modern-day medical sociology have strong disciplinary ties to the sociological study of profession. For example, the germination of medical sociology at Columbia, including The Student Physician study, arose out of a seminar organized by Robert Merton and William J. Goode on professions (“University Seminar on the Professions in Modern Society”).

Emerging Themes

We see two emergent lines of sociological investigation as we move to examine the future of medical sociology— each related to the other. The first is globalization. It is clear that the world in which we live is going through major transformation. This is particularly true of health and health care. We now live in a world where the spread of disease is global and where the poor health of one country affects the well-being of others. Global financial markets and economic competition are challenging the ability of business and governments to provide affordable health care. As such, we can expect that as globalization increases, so will its importance as a major theme in medical sociology (Bury 2005). There are an increasing number of studies examining issues of health and illness in countries other than the United States or Britain—far more than can be listed here.

Resources such as Mechanic and Rochefort’s (1996) “Comparative Medical Systems” and Cockerham’s (2004) The Blackwell Companion to Medical Sociology (with its 17 chapters on the United States, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, Poland, the Czech Republic, South Africa, the Arab world, Israel, Australia, Japan, and the People’s Republic of China) provide an excellent beginning.

The second and related theme is “complexity science.” As argued by a growing list of scholars, and due to key factors such as the information revolution and globalization, anj emerging theme within twentieth-first-century science is complexity (Capra 1996, 2002). One example is the study of complex health networks (Freeman 2004; Scott 2000). While this perspective has been an important part of medical sociology since the 1970s, primarily in terms of explaining the role that social support and kinship networks play in promoting health and well-being, the latest advances in the study of complex networks (e.g., small worlds, scale-free networks) are providing new insights into the processes by which diseases spread and the ways that health care providers can improve the health and well-being of large populations (Watts 2004).

As these two new themes suggest, the theoretical framework of medical sociology continues to change to meet the new and contextually  grounded needs of health care providers and patients. Medical sociology is—and remains—a theoretically rich area of study.

Medical sociology is a rich and diverse field that has, in its short history, gone through an appreciable amount of institutional and intellectual development. Some of these changes have been good, as in the case of the continuing application of sociological theory to the field. Others, such as the continued institutional difficulties medical sociology has had in finding a home in both sociology and medical education, continue to plague the field, both in terms of its legitimacy and the impact of its ideas. Despite these struggles, medical sociology remains an important part of the sociological family and the field of health care. This is particularly evident given the increasing relevance that health and health care issues have—along with a “sociological understanding” of these issues—to the global world in which we now live. Following a tradition that emphasizes theoretical relevance, the current generation of medical sociologists are once again embracing the latest theoretical advancements in sociology (e.g., network analysis, complexity science, globalization) and advancing them to help us better understand (as a global society) the evolving patterns of social relationship we call health and health care.

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Sociology Research Topics Ideas

February 25, 2019

Sociology as a science has many directions. Here you can read the most popular options for topics and choose for yourself the most interesting.

Sociology Research Topics on Family

• Monitoring the transformation of the childhood
• Disciplinary practices in single-parent families
• Features of childhood socialization in families with pets
• Agents and institutions of non-family socialization of children and adolescents
• Family Sociology in the 21st Century
• Family as an object and subject of the universal processes of civilization and modernization
• An impact of bullying in anxiety development in teenagers
• Poor family as an object of sociological analysis
• Intrafamily violence in the modern world: sociological analysis
• Peculiarities of the socialization of young men from incomplete families

Medical Sociology Research Topics

• Inequalities in health care and social classes
• The development of new ways of treatment
• Physical and psychological health support of the society
• The modern role of the doctor in changing the attitude of the population towards health as a social value
• Health and disease as social categories. Health Factors
• Impact of globalization on the health of the population
• Health and illness – a question of values. Mental illness
• Prestige of health and illness among young people
• Medicine and health care as social institutions, their role in the health of the population
• Women as patients

Economy Sociology Research Topics

• Can the smart governing resolve the problem of homelessness, or is it up to communities?
• Aggregate Expenditures Model and Equilibrium Output
• Methods of economic sociology
• Relationship between economic sociology and other sciences
• Sociological analysis of the factors of socio-economic development of enterprise
• Capitalism as the destructive force.
• Technology of economic sociology
• Aggregate Demand and Aggregate Supply
• IS-LM Model
• Economical issues of developing countries, and their connection to the US economy.

Environmental Sociology Research Topics

• Super-industrialization, super-chemicalization, super-militarization
• Bioregionalism: the emergence and main ideas
• The level of anthropogenic pressure on the environment in the XVI-XVIII
• Environmental Sociology
• Global changes and environmental crisis
• The level of negative impact of industrial wastes on the environment and on people’s health
• Consumer attitude towards nature
• Man as the determining factor in establishing rational relationships with nature
• Technology and the Environment Research Paper
• Social ecology and anarchism

Sociology Research Topics For College Students

• Patriot Act
• Prisons and prisoners
• Police brutality
• Diploma mills
• Distance education
• Grade inflation
• The psychological impact of war on children.
• Education and funding
• Roe vs. Wade
• A world in peace – is it real, or is it just a fantasy?

Sociology Research Topics About Health

• Prescription drugs
• Drunk driving as the bane of modern existence.
• Plastic surgery
• Drug abuse and its impact as a major social issue.
• Societal impact on teenage smoking.
• Sociology of Mental Health
• The significane of Tobacco control laws.
• Organic foods

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Digital Sociology Research Topics

• The impact of social media on interpersonal relationships.
• Digital divide: Access to technology across different social strata.
• Online communities and their role in shaping societal norms.
• Cyberbullying and its effects on adolescents.
• The role of digital activism in social change.

Cultural Sociology Research Topics

• The influence of pop culture on youth identity.
• Food culture and societal values.
• The globalization of fashion and its impact on traditional attire.
• Music genres as a reflection of social movements.
• The role of art in societal development and change.

Sociology of Education Topics

• The impact of homeschooling vs. traditional schooling on social development.
• The effects of standardized testing on educational equity.
• The role of educational technology in leveling the playing field.
• Gender bias in STEM education.
• The impact of cultural capital on educational achievement.

Urban Sociology Research Topics

• Gentrification and its effects on community dynamics.
• Urban poverty and strategies for social intervention.
• The role of public spaces in urban social life.
• Transportation and its influence on urban development.
• Smart cities and the future of urban living.

Global Sociology Research Topics

• The impact of globalization on local cultures.
• Transnational migration and its effects on family structures.
• Climate change and global social movements.
• The role of international organizations in shaping global social policies.
• Cultural imperialism and resistance.

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Home — Blog — Topic Ideas — 500 Mental Health Argumentative Essay Topics & Ideas

500 Mental Health Argumentative Essay Topics & Ideas

Mental health is an increasingly prominent topic in contemporary discourse, reflecting its critical impact on individuals and society as a whole. Addressing mental health issues through argumentative essays allows for a deeper exploration of the complexities involved, fostering greater understanding and advocacy. These essays not only provide an opportunity to challenge existing stigmas and misconceptions but also encourage critical thinking and informed debate.

In this article, we present a comprehensive collection of 500 mental health argumentative essay topics and ideas. This extensive list is designed to inspire students, educators, and professionals to engage with diverse aspects of mental health, from policy and treatment to the social and personal dimensions of mental well-being. Whether you're looking to explore current trends, delve into school-related issues, or discuss specific mental health conditions, you'll find a wide array of topics to suit your needs.

Our curated selection is divided into various categories, ensuring a broad coverage of relevant themes. Additionally, we offer practical tips on how to choose a compelling topic for your essay, ensuring that your work is both impactful and insightful. Dive into this resource to find the perfect mental health essay topic  that will not only engage your readers but also contribute meaningfully to the ongoing conversation about mental health.

🏆 TOP Argumentative Mental Health Topics

• The Importance of Mental Health Awareness
• Mental Health: Thesis Statement
• Dissociative Identity Disorder in The "Split" Movie: a Psychological Analysis
• How Did The Pandemic Affect Your Mental Health: a Reflection
• Breaking The Stigma of Mental Health: an Essential Endeavor
• Mental Illness as a Social Problem
• Borderline Personality Disorder of The Protagonist in ‘Good Will Hunting’ Movie
• Shutter Island: Psychology and Dissociative Identity Disorder
• The Effects of Mental Health on Our Life
• The Main Causes of Mental Health Issues in Students

🔥 20 Trendy Mental Health Argumentative Essay Topics in 2024

• The Role of Social Media in Influencing Teen Mental Health
• The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Practices in Managing Anxiety and Depression
• Should Schools Implement Mental Health Education Programs for Students?
• The Stigma Surrounding Mental Health in Different Cultures and How to Overcome It
• The Link Between Religiosity and Mental Health
• Tracking Mental Well Being by Using Sensing Technology
• The Importance of Workplace Mental Health Initiatives
• The Impact of Academic Pressure on Student Mental Health
• Early Intervention Strategies for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorders
• The Role of Exercise in Mental Health
• The Efficacy of Teletherapy in Mental Health Treatment
• Addressing Mental Health Disparities in Public Health Policies
• The Relationship Between Nutrition and Mental Health
• The Impact of Childhood Trauma on Adult Mental Health
• Mental Health in Marginalized Communities
• The Role of Pets in Improving Mental Health
• The Benefits of Group Therapy for Mental Health
• The Relationship Between Mental Health and Creativity
• The Effects of Social Isolation on Mental Health
• The Use of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) in Treating Depression and Anxiety

🖋 Good Argumentative Mental Health Topics to Write About

• Reduction of Inhibitory Control in People with ADHD
• Ileana Chivescu Case Study
• The Concept of Shyness in Psychology and Its Relation to Anxiety
• The Power of Following Your Fear and Anxiety
• Understanding The Facts Surrounding Bipolar Disorder
• A Comprehensive Exploration of The Phenomenon in The Teaching Profession
• The Complex Relationship Between Nursing, Burnout, and Professional Well-being
• The Relationship Between Academic Burnout and Personality Traits
• Analyzing Toyota's Recall Challenge
• Exploring Crisis and Systems Theories in Social Work Practice
• Understanding, Intervening, and Empowering Through Crisis
• The Story of a 6 Month Old Baby not Wanting to Live
• The Issue of Identity in a Separate Peace by John Knowles
• The Ongoing Researches of Dissociative Identity Disorder, Its Symptoms and Effects
• Dyslexia Disorder Description
• Scholarly Pursuits in Special Education
• How Light is Used in The Circadian Rhythm
• NFL and MLB Performance Regarding Jet Lag Condition
• Simulated Clinical Encounter Research Protocol
• Causes of Witchcraft Mass Hysteria in Salem
• Gile Coreys Death in The Crucible
• Grudges and Personal Rivalries as The Basis for a Mass Hysteria
• Human Nature is Prone to Mass Hysteria: The Crucible and Lindy Chamberlain Case
• Mass Hysteria, Fear and Paranoia, and Its Effect on People
• The Royal Free Epidemic of 1955 as a Mass Hysteria
• Understanding of Mass Hysterias Throughout History: Witches, Communists, and Clowns
• The Meaning of Psychological Well-being and Its Theoretical Conceptualization
• Using a Traditional Therapy Model and a Community Psychology
• Violence in Mental Health Settings
• Trapped Protagonists in Atwood's "Handmaid's Tale" and Kane's "4.48 Psychosis"
• Isolation from The Society: Heroism Or Foolishness
• Racism in American Society in 'Just Walk on By' by Brent Staples
• Social Isolation in The Elderly: Causes and Consequences
• Social Isolation, Independence, and Interdependence in Learning Outcomes
• Where I Lived and What I Lived: Experiment of Social Isolation
• Key Features of Good Quality Edible Fungi
• Narrative Essay on Stress
• Review on The Trichotillomania
• Worst Experience of My Life Essay
• The Influence that Arousal, Stress, and Anxiety Can Have on Sport Performance
• The Main Factors and Causes of Professional Burnout
• The New Sources of Stress in Modern Society
• Investigation into The Stress Response of Bacteria
• The Relationship Between Physiology and Behavior in Stress
• Conjugal Visits and The Issue of Sexual Encounters in Prison
• Hips and Pelvis
• Studies on Recovered Memory and Trauma
• The Things They Carried Theme Essay
• Theories of Trauma
• Trauma at The Tunnel in Los Angeles: Emergency Response

🪄 Simple Argumentative Mental Health Essay Topics

• The Effect of ADHD on The Life of an Individual
• Behavioral Disorders: Causes, Symptoms, and Support
• Understanding ADHD: a Comprehensive Analysis
• Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) and The Impact Nature Have on It
• The Importance of Managing Stress and Anxiety in Early Age
• Anxiety Disorder Among Children and Ways to Prevent It
• The Issue of Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Social Anxiety Disorder: Causes and What It Feels Like
• The Effects of Bipolar Disorder on The Human Brain and Behavior
• Understanding Bipolar Disorder: Causes, Symptoms, and Impact
• Treating Muscle Dysmorphia
• Examining Borderline Personality Disorder, a Mental Disorder
• The Basics of Borderline Personality Disorder
• Overcoming Burnout Syndrome
• Understanding and Addressing Burnout and Compassion Fatigue in The Healthcare Workplace
• The Impact of Occupational Burnout on Teachers
• The Toll of Accountability: Burnout in The Nursing Profession
• What is Nursing Compassion Fatigue and Burnout
• Mental Illness that Affects Millions of People
• The Connection Between Dissociative Identity Disorder and Criminal Behavior
• Discussion on Whether Dissociative Identity Disorder is a Valid Disorder
• Dyslexia: Advocacy, Representation, and Awareness Raising
• Dyslexia: Understanding and Addressing Challenges in 2023
• Types of Insomnia
• Addressing Mental Health: Awareness, Support, and Intervention
• Problems, Research and Treatment of Major Depression Disorder
• The Effectiveness of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in The Treatment of Major Depressive Disorder
• Major Depressive Disorder and Its Prevention
• Supportive Homes for People with Serious Mental Illness
• Mental Health Challenges in Higher Education
• Mental Health Awareness Importance: The Bahraini Case
• Prioritizing Early Intervention for Children's Mental Health
• The Impact of Covid-19 on Mental Health
• Mental Illness in The Criminal Justice System
• The Problem of Ignorance About Mental Illness
• Perception Vs Reality: The Challenge of Mental Illness
• Wake Up Mental Health Awareness: Why It is Important
• The Issue of Stigma Against Mental Patients and Its Solution
• The Effect of Mental Illnesses on Art Throughout Different Time Periods
• How Mental Health Affects Us Everyday
• Mental Illnesses: Definition, Kinds and Its Effects on Society
• The Problem of Mental Disorders Among School Students
• The Interrelation Between Mental Illness and Drug Addiction
• The Stigma of Mental Illness and Forms of Treatment
• Research of Stigmatization of Mental Illness
• The Use of Restraint in Mental Health In-patient Environments
• The Dangers of Smart Phones
• The Disadvantages of Social Networking
• Personality Disorder Diagnosis: Personal Experience
• 10 Things You Do if You Have Maladaptive Daydreaming

🏫 Argumentative Essay Topics about Mental Health in Schools

• ADHD: The Child/teacher Struggle
• Diagnosing Dyscalculia and ADHD Diagnosis in Schools
• The Importance of Online Schooling for ADD/ADHD Students
• Description and Prevention of The Most Common Mental Health Disorders
• The Problem of Social Anxiety Disorders of Teenagers
• A Study of Social Anxiety Disorder and Simple Shyness
• Anxiety Disorders: Types, Causes, Impacts, Treatment
• Overview of Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Solution for Anxiety Disorders
• Symptoms and Treatment for Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• The Characteristics, Causes, and Prevalence of Panic Disorder, an Anxiety Disorder
• Treatment, Symptoms, and Prevention Strategies for Bipolar Disorder
• Understanding Bipolar Disorder: Symptoms, Treatment, and Management
• Children’s Social and Emotional Well-being
• Nexus of Educator Stress, Burnout, and Leadership Styles in Girls’ State Secondary Schools
• The Impact of Leadership Styles on Educator Burnout in a Girls' State Secondary School
• The Relationship Between Academic Burnout and Personality Traits of Neuroticism and Agreeableness
• Exploring Theoretical Perspectives and Interventions in Social Work
• Legal, Ethical, and Practical Dimensions of Online Psychological Interventions in Crisis Situations
• Theoretical Foundations and Methodological Approaches in Social Work Practice
• Understanding Crisis Dynamics and Response Strategies
• Advancing Inclusive Learning: Tech and Educational Strategies
• Conquering Dyslexia: The Road to Succeeding in Life with The Learning Disability
• Embracing Inclusivity: Effective Strategies for Students
• Learning Disabilities: Governance, Employment, and Support
• My Experience: How to Live with Dyslexia
• Study of Developmental Phonological Dyslexia
• A Brain Disorder that Prevents The Comprehension of People
• Understanding Learning Disabilities
• My Experience with a Patient with Depressive Disorder
• Addressing The Stigma and The Importance of Treatment
• Breaking The Stigma of Mental Health: Awareness and Acceptance
• Exploring Disruptive Mood Dysregulation Disorder
• Mental Health Awareness: Importance and Impact
• Mental Health Crisis Among College Students
• Mental Health Crisis of University Students: Analysis of The Impact of Covid-19
• Mental Health Issues Among Malaysian Students: Finding Coping Methods
• Mental Health of The Lower Class
• My Struggle with Anxiety and Depression
• Personality Dysfunctions on The Characters in Winnie The Pooh
• Prioritizing Mental Health: Individual and Collective Responsibility
• Should Standardized Testing Be Abolished?
• Teenage Mental Health: The Increase in Mental Illnesses
• The Impact of Mental Health in Schools
• The Importance of Psychology in Developing Countries
• The Importance of Understanding of Self-knowledge and The Subconscious Mind
• Understanding Mental Health: Definition, Causes, and Impacts
• Understanding Self-injury from Personal Experience
• Factors Affecting Mental Health of a Nurse
• Social Isolation: Effects on an Individual from a Social, Medical and Psychological Perspective

👩‍🎓 Mental Health Debate Topics for Students

• How Americans Relate to Depression in "Comfortably Numb" by Charles Barber
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Unpacking The Traits
• Research on Psychopathy as a Neuro-developmental Disorder
• A Study of The Management of Mental Illnesses in a Family
• A Study of Narcissistic Personality Disorder
• A Study Regarding Medication Adherence Among Female Inmates with Bipolar Disorder
• An Analysis of The Relation Between Mental Illness, Ethnicity and Social Classes
• An Argument on Dissociative Identity Disorder (did) as Fictitious
• An Examination of The Six Mental Illnesses and Its Impact on Human Life
• An Overview of Dissociative Identity Disorder, Its Types, Diagnosis, and Treatment
• An Overview of Narcissism and How to Deal with It
• Analysis of a Personality with Mental Issues Using Jung's and Adler's Theories
• Analysis of The Cases of Dissociative Identity Disorder
• Analysis of The Mental Impact of Anxiety and Hostility
• Antisocial Personality Disorders in Patrick Bateman's American
• Anxiety Disorder: The Mind Which Plays All The Game
• ASPD: Definition, Causes, and Treatment Strategies
• "Bagg Lady": Analysis of Mental Illness
• Bipolar Disorder: Concept, Types, Symptoms
• Bipolar Disorder, Its Symptoms and Indicators
• Bipolar Disorder: Types and Symptoms
• Body Dysmorphia: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment Approaches
• Body Dysmorphic Disorder Literature Review
• Borderline Personality Disorder in Holden Caulfield
• Collaboration Between Psychologists and Psychiatrists in Mental Health Care
• Crisis Theory and Critical Incident Stress Debriefing in Law Enforcement
• Cultural Competence in Crisis Intervention
• Cultural Views of Mental Illness
• Dependent Personality Disorder
• Depiction of Mass Hysteria in The Crucible by Arthur Miller
• Emotional Deficit in Patients with Psychopathy: a Literature Review
• Exploration of Treatments for Major Depressive Disorders
• How Does COVID-19 Affect Mental Health
• How Obsessive-compulsive Disorder is Depicted in Martin Scorsese's Film The Aviator
• How Reactive Attachment Disorder (RAD) Can Affect Children
• How The Antisocial Personality Traits of Those Diagnosed with Psychopathy Are Conducive to Assault
• Hypnotherapeutic Treatments for Stress, Anxiety and Phobias
• Impact of Employee Burnout on Work Performance in an Organization
• Individual and Society Damage of Burnout Syndrome
• Obsessive-compulsive Disorder (OCD): a Comprehensive Overview
• Joey Barton and His Diagnosis of Antisocial Personality Disorder
• Mental Illness and Homelessness: a Complex Interplay
• Mental Illness and Its Treatment Nowadays
• Narcissistic Personality Disorder: Diagnosis, Causes, and Treatment
• Obsessive-compulsive Disorder
• Obsessive-compulsive Disorder: a General Overview
• How Bipolar Disorder Can Be Attributed to Heredity
• Connection Between Drug Abuse and Mental Health
• Connection Between Gender and Mental Health
• Bipolar Disorder: Definition, Symptoms and Features

🎤 Mental Health Speech Topics

• A Study on The Psychological Development
• Analysis of Treatment Decisions for a Child with ADHD
• Anorexia Nervos Social Determinants of Health
• Anxiety Speech Outline
• Bond Between Mother and Child: Effects of Maternal Depression
• Bridging The Gap Between Police Officers and Citizens with Mental Illnesses in Canada
• Burnout and Contagion of Rigorous Care Nurses
• Character Analysis of Girl Interrupted
• Childhood Trauma and College Freshmen
• Concurrent Disorder Case Study Reflection
• Crisis Understanding, Intervention, and Recovery
• Dear Person Who is "So Ocd"
• Development of a Terrorist’s Mentality: Religion, Mental Illness of Psychopathy and DNA
• Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
• Distress and Demoralization of Nurses as a Source of Anxiety and Job Seniority
• Effects and Treatment of Bipolar Disorders
• Emergency Service Burnout Symptoms and Solutions
• Empowering Recovery: The Human Service Model for College Substance Abuse
• Fears and Phobias
• How Psychopathy Can Be Seen as Conditional Defense Mechanism
• Ian Gallagher: Mania and Manmas in The Show Shameless
• Incidents of Mass Hysteria Throughout History
• John and Jane: Women Are Prone to Madness
• Learning Disability in America
• Main Characteristics of Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Mass Hysteria and Its Impact on Society in The Crucible
• Mass Hysteria in The Crucible
• Mental Health Issue in Malaysia
• Mental Health: Prioritizing Education, Access, and Awareness
• Morello Mental Illness
• No I’m not Shy: I Have Social Anxiety
• OCD: Understanding and Promoting Mental Health Awareness
• People with GAD
• Perfectionism is Destroying People
• Personal Experience of The Struggles Associated with Asperger's Syndrome and ADHD
• Personality Disorders and Their Treatment
• Prioritizing Mental Health: Significance and Impact
• Psychological Disorders Overview: Classification, Prevalence
• Reflecting on My Real Life Experience with Trauma
• Research of Whether Dissociative Identity Disorder is a Real Disorder
• Sources of Stress in Youth
• The Psychological Impact of Body Dysmorphic Disorder
• The Mechanism of Mass Hysteria in The Past and Today
• Understanding Adverse Childhood Experiences
• The Cultural Beliefs Concerning Mental Illnesses in The South Asian Community
• The Effects of Methylphenidate on Adults with ADHD
• The Effects of The Stigmatization of Mental Illness on The Society
• The History, Origin, Types, Misconceptions and Treatment of Mental Diseases
• The Importance and Future of Mental Health Research
• The Issue of Mental Illnesses in Women in "The Yellow Wallpaper"

🚑 Health Care Argumentative Essay Topics

• Is It Ethical For Parents To Use Genetic Engineering To Create “Designer Babies” With Specific Physical And Intellectual Traits?
• Should The Government Implement Stronger Regulations On Pharmaceutical Pricing?
• Is It Ethical To Prioritize Healthcare Resources For Younger Patients Over Older Patients During A Crisis?
• What Role Should Alternative Medicine Play In Modern Healthcare?
• Compare and Contrast Psychologists and Psychiatrists
• Should Organ Donation Be Mandatory?
• Is Surrogacy Ethical?
• How to Remedy Penile Dysmorphic Disorder (PDD)
• DSM System for Mental Disorder Classification
• The Impact of Gluten on Mental Health
• Should Mental Health Care Be Integrated Into Primary Healthcare Services?
• How Can Telemedicine Bridge The Gap In Healthcare Accessibility In Rural Areas?
• The Importance of Autonomy in Counselling
• Should Healthcare Be Considered A Basic Human Right?
• Is The Privatization Of Healthcare Services Beneficial Or Harmful To The Public?
• The Shift in Ideas About Mental Diseases Over The Years
• Should Parents Be Legally Required To Vaccinate Their Children To Protect Public Health?
• Should The Government Legalize Assisted Suicide For Terminally Ill Patients?
• The Perception of Mental Illnesses by Senegalese People
• Should Hospitals Be For-Profit Or Nonprofit Institutions?
• Understanding Mental Health and Its Impact on Individuals and Society
• Why Mental Illness is More Prevalent in The LGBT Community than in The General Population
• Should Minors Have Access To Emergency Contraception?
• Why Perfectionism is Associated with Depression, Anorexia Nervosa, Suicide Ideation and Early Death
• Should The U.S. Government Offer Its Own Healthcare Plan?
• The Effectiveness Of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (Cbt) In Treating Anxiety And Depression
• Should The Government Fund Research On Embryonic Stem Cells For Medical Treatments?
• The Role Of Nutrition In Managing Chronic Diseases
• The Impact Of Climate Change On Global Health
• The Ethics Of Mandatory Vaccination Policies For Healthcare Workers

🌟 Mental Health Argumentative Essay Topics in Popular Categories

• The Issue of Depression and Its Affect in an Emerging Adulthood
• Prevention of Depression, Anxiety and Burnout in Resident Doctors – a Systematic Review
• About Depression in College: Understanding and Overcoming
• Darwinian Psychology and Depression: The Gender Differential Hypothesis
• The Connection Between Internet Addiction and Depression Within Adolescents
• Causes of Depression Among International Students
• Depression and Its Effects on Mind and Body
• Depression in Teenagers: Causes and Ways to Overcome
• How to Overcome Teenage Depression
• Living in Depression: a Firsthand Account
• Overview of Electronic Problem-solving Treatment (EPST) System to Treat Depression
• The Role of Minerals in Preventing and Combating Depression
• Research on Depression and Working Memory
• The Link Between Self-esteem and Adolescent Depression
• Depression as The Reason of Serious Health Problems and Suicide
• Positive Thinking as Treatment for Depression
• A Depressing World with Different Obstacles
• A Report on Depression in University Students and How to Overcome It
• Depression: Definition, Risks, Symptoms and Treatment
• Understanding Depression: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatment
• Depression: Definition and Ways of Resolving Caused Problems
• The Factors Influencing Depression Development
• The Effects of Depression in Your Body and Its Treatment
• The Issue of Depression and Its Reality Nowadays
• Depression Facts and Statistics: Psychiatry's Deadliest Scam in the DSM
• Depression is Depression an Actual Illness
• My Depression: a Tale of Struggle and Resilience
• What Are You Depressed About Think About It
• What is a Depression?
• How Depression Changed My Life: College Admission Paper
• The Issue of Depression: Mental Battle
• Dysregulated Processing of Negative and Positive Responses in Depression
• Genetic Disorder Report: Clinical Depression
• Review on Depression in Scotland
• The Epidemic of Depression Among Students and Teenagers
• How to Overcome Depression and Anxiety
• Depression and Its Main Causes
• The Best Way to Help Someone Who is Depressed
• Overview of Biological Predispositions and Risk Factors Associated with Depression
• Teen Depression - Symptoms and Causes
• Anxiety and Depression During Emerging Adulthood
• MYP Personal Project: Childhood Anxiety and Insecurity
• Overview of Anxiety Disorders in Children, Its Types and Impact
• Influence of an Anxious Response on a Person
• How to Overcome Anxiety Disorder
• Representation of The Social Anxieties About Diversity
• Cognitive Behavioral Theory Application for Anxiety Disorder
• Lowdown on Anxiety and How to Cope with It Better
• Research of Anxiety Increasing in The United States
• Anxiety The Ever Tightening Spiral
• Clinical Assessment: Case Study
• Anxiety, Its Development, Effects, and Treatments
• Reflection on How I Fought My Social Anxiety with The Help of Family
• Pros and Cons of Anxiety
• Anxiety and Depression Among College Students: a Critical Analysis
• Social Anxiety: Exploring The Psychological and Social Dimensions
• Anxiety: Causes, Symptoms and My Personal Experience
• A Study on Anxiety Disorders and Its Negative Impact on People
• Anxiety Disorders Experienced by Children
• Social Anxiety Disorder and Its Impacts on The Lives of The Americans
• Somatic Symptoms and Illness Anxiety Disorder
• The Treatments and Conditions of Social Anxiety
• Research of Social Anxiety Disorder: Symptoms, Causes, Effects and Treatments
• What is Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Its Treatment
• Anxiety: Navigating The College Experience
• Social Anxiety Disorder: My Experience
• The Problem of Public Speaking Anxiety
• The Way Teachers Can Help Their Students to Overcome Anxiety and Depression
• The Problem of Anxiety and Stress and Its Treatment
• Overview of Stranger and Separation Anxiety
• Yoga and Stress
• Substance Use as a Form of Coping with Stress
• Teaching Competency and Stress Among Public Elementary School Teachers in Oas South District
• Stress - a Universal Problem
• Managing Stress: Causes, Effects, and Coping Mechanisms
• Stress and Self-care
• The Effects of Stress on Human Health
• Work/life Balance and Stress Management
• Feelings: Determine The Quality of Energy
• Prevalence of Occupational Stress and Associated Factors
• Traveling and Its Impact Towards Stress
• Stress Related to Job and Ways to Manage It
• Coloring Books Will Change Your Life Forever
• Stress: Definition, Types and Impact
• Effects of Stress on The Mind and Body
• The Impact of Stress on Health: Physical and Mental Dimensions
• Stress and Its Main Sources
• A Study on The Negative Impact of Stress on an Individual's Health
• Comparison of Stress Rates Among Children and Adults
• How Does Stress Affect The Body: Physical and Psychological Effects
• Stress and Its Role in Our Life
• The Importance of Stress Management
• Perfectionism and Academic Stress in Undergraduate and Post-Graduate Students
• The Impact of Stress on Academic Success in College Students
• Diathesis Stress Model of Psychopathology
• Effects of Stress on The Body: How It Affects Physical and Psychological Health
• Correct Mindset in Coping with Stress
• The Stress of Student Mothers
• Running Head Discussion
• A Stressful Situation and How I Handled It
• Suicide as an Honorable Choice in Viking Sagas
• The Punishment for Those Who Committed Suicide in Dante Alighieri's Inferno
• The Relationship Between Social Media and Teenage Suicide
• The Issue and Role of Suicide in Existential Psychotherapy
• An Argument on Why Suicide Is Not Worth It
• Overview of The Main Causes of Teenage Suicide
• Adolescent Depression and Its Contribution to Teenage Suicides
• Essay on Military Suicide
• Suicide Cases Among Successful Young Adults
• Arguments Expressed by Proponents of The Legalization of Physician-assisted Suicide (PAS)
• Understanding Suicide: Causes, Signs, and Prevention Strategies
• The Relative Influence of Individual Risk Factors for Attempted Suicide
• The Role of Cyberbullying in Increasing Suicide Rates Among Teens
• Death Rates Among American Men Due to Suicide
• How to Prevent Suicidal Behavior in High-risk Groups
• Whether Suicide is Morally Acceptable
• The Roots of Pressure Or Why People Commit Suicide
• The Concept of Suicide in The History of Japan
• The Importance of Human Life Preserving
• The Complexity of Suicide: Understanding The Why
• A Report on Teenage Suicide: Signs, Causes, and Prevention
• Teenage Suicide Epidemic and How We Can Prevent It
• Academic Pressure as The Main Reason for Teenage Suicides in South Korea
• The Impact of Celebrity Suicides on Public Perception and Mental Health Awareness
• Why Do Teenagers Commit Suicide
• How Society Increases Teenage Suicide Rates
• Socio-economic Factors that Cause Teenage Suicide
• The Main Reasons of Teenage Suicide in America
• The Problem of Teenage Suicide in The United States and How to Prevent It
• Trauma, Suicide, and Residential Schools: Impact on Canadian Indigenous People

Schizophrenia

• Psychosis and Schizophrenia in Children
• The Effectiveness of Antipsychotic Medications in Treating Schizophrenia
• Schizoaffective Disorder: The Bridge Between Schizophrenia and Bipolar
• Biopsychosocial Influences on Schizophrenia
• Research of Schizophrenia Disorder
• The Role of Genetics in Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia and Its Impact on Family Dynamics
• Innovative Therapies for Managing Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Treatment, and Stigma
• Schizophrenia: Definition, Symptoms, Causes
• Understanding Schizophrenia: Overview, Diagnosis, Treatment
• Analysis of The Symptoms of Schizophrenia
• Case Study: Mr. Nash's Schizophrenia and Treatment Plan
• Schizophrenia and Crime: The Complex Relationship
• The Ethical Implications of Forced Treatment for Schizophrenia
• The Role of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy in Treating Schizophrenia
• The Impact of Schizophrenia on Homelessness
• Stigma and Discrimination Faced by Individuals with Schizophrenia
• Technological Advances in Diagnosing Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia and the Criminal Justice System
• Connection Between Schizophrenia and Social Isolation
• Alice in Wonderland Syndrome
• The History of Schizophrenia
• Schizophrenia and Substance Abuse: A Vicious Cycle
• Schizophrenia in the Workplace: Challenges and Solutions
• Cultural Differences in the Perception and Treatment of Schizophrenia
• Early Intervention Strategies for Schizophrenia
• Long-term Outcomes for Individuals with Schizophrenia
• The Relationship Between Schizophrenia and Creativity
• The Role of Diet and Nutrition in Managing Schizophrenia

Stress Management

• A Study on College Stress Management
• The Impact of Mindfulness Meditation on Stress Reduction
• Workplace Stress: Causes and Solutions
• The Effects of Chronic Stress on Physical Health
• Maintaining a Stress-Free Life: Personal Self-care and Burnout Strategy
• Subjective and Objective Methodology in Stress Management
• Stress Management in The Nurses' Workplace
• Stress Management Techniques for High School Students
• The Role of Nutrition in Stress Management
• Stress and Sleep: How Lack of Sleep Affects Stress Levels
• Coping Up with Stress
• Stress Cause and Effect
• Coping with Stress Essay
• Stress Management Strategies for Parents
• Managing Stress: Causes, Effects, and Techniques
• "Good" Stress Vs "Bad" Stress
• Stress Management of Teachers
• The Role of Exercise in Stress Management
• Stress Management: What is Stress and How to Overcome It
• The Benefits of Yoga for Stress Relief
• Technology and Stress: How to Manage Digital Overload
• Stress Causes and Response to It
• The Impact of Financial Stress on Mental Health
• Stress Response and Stress Management
• The Relationship Between Stress and Substance Abuse
• Stress Response and Ways to Manage Stress
• How Social Support Networks Can Help Manage Stress
• Stress Management Techniques for Athletes
• The Role of Hobbies in Reducing Stress
• The Impact of Environmental Stressors on Mental Health

How to Choose a Good Mental Health Argumentative Essay Topics

Choosing a good mental health argumentative essay topic is crucial for crafting a compelling and impactful essay. Here are five tips to help you select the perfect topic:

• Relevance : Ensure the topic is current and significant.
• Interest : Choose a subject you are passionate about.
• Researchable : Pick a topic with ample resources available.
• Specificity : Narrow down broad subjects for focus.
• Debate Potential : Select topics with clear opposing viewpoints.

In conclusion, exploring mental health argumentative essay topics is an invaluable endeavor that contributes to raising awareness and fostering informed discussions. This extensive list provides a variety of mental health topics to write about, ensuring that there is something for everyone, regardless of interest or expertise. By choosing a relevant, engaging, and well-researched topic, you can create a compelling essay that not only educates but also challenges preconceived notions about mental health. Dive into these topics, and let your writing make a difference in the ongoing conversation about mental well-being.

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