Medicamentalisation – Medicamentation in the Societies of Late Capitalism

The aim is to present some basic characteristics of the processes of medicalisation and medicamentalisation. Both processes are very complex with various negative and positive effects on the lives of individuals and on the sustainability of public health care systems. The problem is further complicated by the broadness of definitions of both processes on one hand and by foregrounding the analysis of individual cases of medicalization on the other. The most important feature of medicalisation will be emphasized: application of the bio-medical model for explanations and for the treatment of conditions which belong to the normal range of human physical and emotional states. According to this, medicalization is the process by which medical diagnosis and treatement are attributed to normal physical and psychological problems. Medicamentalisation is closely connected with the process of medicalisation, but it is not a necessary consequence of the medicalisation of an individual psychological or physical state. The actors of both processes are numerous. The most important are: the pharmaceutical industry, mass media and different kind of patients associations. The most important direct causes of the medicalisation and medicamentalisation of modern societies are directed to consumer marketing of prescription and nonprescription medications and disease mongering. One of the most interesting consequences of medicalisation is the emergence of the medical consumer, that still further brings changes to the relation between the physician and the patient. Modifications in the privileged places of medicalized joints of "power–knowledge" are significant socio-cultural effects of medicalization