Medicalization
The term “medicalization” came into popular and academic use in the 1970s and can perhaps be first traced to medical sociologist Ivan Illich’s book Limits to Medicine: Medical Nemeses (1975). Illich used the term in his discussion of “iatrogenesis,” the ways that medicine itself may make social and biological conditions worse as a result of medical intervention. In his book The Medicalization of Society, Peter Conrad defines medicalization as “a process by which nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually in terms of illness and disorders” (2007, 4).