What are Edward Suchman's (1965) five stages of illness experience?
According to Edward Suchman (1965), illness has stages, namely, (1) symptom experience; (2) assumption of the sick role; (3) medical care contact; (4) dependent patient role; and (5) recovery and rehabilitation. The first stage is initiated when someone starts to sense something is wrong by perceiving pain, general unease, discomfort, and disruption of body functioning. During the second stage, a person is aware of his illnesses and takes on the sick role. In the third stage, a person assesses disease with the view of getting help from a medical practitioner. The response is socially and culturally determined by observing how people in society respond to symptoms of the disease.
If the response is always to seek medical intervention, people will seek help at this stage in keeping in societal beliefs. The fourth stage is the period when a sick person decides he or she needs medical intervention. Both internal and individual factors, as well as outside factors, which are cultural or social, influence the decision to seek care. The fifth stage is the dependent patient role, and the patient attempts to recover or rehabilitates his or her health. The patient less work responsibility and might take proper diet to strengthen the body.
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What are the rights and responsibilities of the sick role?
According to Parsons, illness is not just a biological or psychological condition but an unstructured state free of social norms and regulations. A person relinquishes the normal roles and adopts a new role known as the sick role, which gives the ill person certain exemptions, rights, and obligations. The exceptions provided include foregoing normal social roles and responsibilities, but they require the endorsement of the physician. Another exemption is that the sick person is not held responsible for the illness, although a sickness is a form of deviance. However, to be granted the sick role, the patient must accept two obligations. One, he or she must want to get well so that the performance of normal roles can resume. Secondly, the sick person must seek medical advice and cooperate in his treatment and rehabilitation. A sick person who fails to seek medical attention of professionals is suspected of faking illness. In summary, a sick person has the right to take on the sick role if he is genuinely sick.
What are the four factors that David Mechanic (1968) identifies as key to determining how an individual will respond to illness?
According to Mechanic, several factors determine how an individual will respond to illness. The first factor is the visibility, recognizability, or the perpetual salience of the symptoms. While some diseases have striking symptoms, others are less visible and might require specialized checkup using specific machines. Diseases with noticeable symptoms are likely to nudge most people to seek medical intervention or taking the condition seriously. The severity of the symptoms is an indicator of the perceived seriousness of the condition or illness.
The second factor is the extent to which symptoms disrupt family, work, and other social activities. If the symptoms cause significant disruptions, a person is likely to respond by seeking intervention from medical professionals. The third factor is the frequency of the appearance of symptoms, persistence, frequency, or recurrence. The response is also likely to take place if the symptoms are recurring.
Why is the biopsychosocial model more relevant for today's illness patterns?
The biopsychosocial model is interdisciplinary and examines illness from the perspective of biology, psychology, and socio-environmental factors. Traditional health models viewed illness or poor health from a biological standpoint or factors that include genetic, biochemical, etc. However, over time, it has become increasingly clear that other factors influence health as well, and they might be the primary drivers of an illness in the first place. For instance, poor socio-economic conditions lead to poor outcomes due to a lack of resources to invest in preventive care. Also, poor people cannot afford nutritionally balanced food, leading to lifestyle diseases such as obesity and diabetes.
The model is influential because it seeks to address the typical patterns of modern diseases. A combination of various factors that include external factors such as pollution, the personality that might determine the willingness to seek medical intervention, and socio-economic factors are the main drivers of modern illness. Cancer, which is among the leading killer diseases, has a strong environmental component. Therefore, to address the modern diseases, it is not enough to address the biological causes such as pathogens, but seeking to change living conditions, addressing poverty, and launching health education is important.
What are the three types of physician-patient relationships included in the Szasz- Hollender Model? (Briefly explain each model.)
The three models are activity-passivity, guidance-cooperation, and mutual participation. In activity-passivity, the patient undertakes some intervention to the patient by such as diagnosing the condition or offering treatment. The patient, on the other hand, is unable to respond, or he is inert. The clinical application of the model could be anesthesia, and the prototype of the model is parent-infant.
Under the guidance-cooperation model, the role of the physician is to tell the patient what to do. The patient is the cooperator and obeys, and the clinical application model is an acute infectious process. The prototype of the model is parent-child (adolescent). In mutual participation, the physician helps the patient to improve himself. The patient is an active player in his health, and the clinical application model is might be treating illnesses or psychoanalysis. The prototype model is adult-adult.
