GRSJ224Bobby

When I am ill I try my hardest to shrug it off and not pay attention to it. My mother always has some home remedy she suggests, usually a homemade soup, tea or even at times forcing me to mix lemon, chilli powder, green tea leaves in hot boiling water and drinking it. Almost always my mother gets these ideas from health magazines or from reading it online. Ben Goldacre provides an interesting Ted talk on this in ‘Battling Bad Science’ as he provides a critical insight into the stories about new innovations in health within the media and how they are not only misleading but false. My dad on the other hand is always forcing me to go to the doctors (even for the slightest of illness) as he only trusts a physician’s word. I found the Social construction of Illness: Key Insights and Policy Implications article very useful as it made me realize about how I view my illness as something that would not restrict me into continuing my daily activities such as going to work or school. This also made me think of Foucault’s idea of how the medical discourse constructs knowledge about the body and illnesses (Conrad & Barker, 69) and how I would be dubious of mom’s remedies or going to the doctors because I always thought I would get better on my own. Interestingly after reading this module I have realized that most of the medical discourse and society’s definition of illness is based on the construction of labels on people’s experiences with illnesses.