3_Medicalization - A Multi-Dimensional Concept - Ballard and Elston

patients and lay people. This leads us to consider more nuanced, multi-
dimensional accounts of specific conditions, which indicate that medicalisa-
tion might be a much more complex, ambiguous, and contested process than
the ‘medicalisation thesis’ of the 1970s implied. Finally, we return to consider
the macro-level societal context and likely trends in medicalisation.
THE CONCEPT OF MEDICALISATION
Medicalisation has been defined as a ‘process whereby more and more of
everyday life has come under medical dominion, influence and supervision’
(Zola, 1983, p. 295). The idea that medicine might be enlarging its sphere of
influence to incorporate more and more aspects of the social world emerged
during the 1960s. Critics of psychiatry (eg Szasz, 1963) expressed concerns
over the increasing tendency for socially problematic behaviours such as
excess alcohol consumption and, at that time, homosexuality to be regarded
and treated as medical conditions. This growing reliance on medicine also