Original scientific paper

Sociological Aspects of Health and Sickness

Mirko ŠTIFANIĆ

Abstract

There is no idea of sickness and health which would be the
same for all people. Different ways of understanding
sickness and health are directly connected with conditions
and relationships in a society, and with the type of behaviour
of a group or an individual. Sociological researches of
sickness and health deal with social factors which can cause,
and have a bad influence on the course and result of various
diseases. The aim of observing social conditions is to
discover conditions of human life which could improve health
and prevent a disease. A typical problem for sociological
research is the influence of life-style, sex, age, race,
economic and socio-cultural status on health and sickness.
The basic aim of such research is to make the results
accessible to people, regardless of their social status. That is the way how social sciences, Medical Sociology in particular,
established themselves as academic disciplines in developed
countries of the west (USA, Germany...), where Medical
Sociology has developed the adequate research methods
which help in presenting the conditions, development and
projections of a society. There is a need of sociological
theoretical-methodological approach which would
correspond to economic, cultural, legal, ethnical and political
changes in Croatia on the verge of the 21st century, to be
able to carry out sociological researches of sickness and
health in Croatian social studies. Croatian medical
sociologists should use rich experiences of the western
countries, the USA in particular, in order to observe the
conditions of health in a transitional society dominated by
conflicts, drastic differentiation, marginalization of a great
part of the society and nemesis. And thus, help the society in
understanding itself and in recognizing the needs for its
development during the period of transition, which directly
influences health and social results in general.

Keywords

Hrčak ID:

20165

URI

https://hrcak.srce.hr/20165

Publication date:

30.4.2001.

Article data in other languages: croatian german

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