Medicalization

Argues against eliminating monthly menstruation artificially by ingesting synthetic hormones.

Demonstrates that news coverage of restless legs syndrome exaggerates the prevalence of disease and the need for treatment, and fails to consider the problems of overdiagnosis.

Examines sexual attitudes in the 20th century crucial in setting the scene for the creation of female sexual dysfunction (FSD). Highlights steps in the history of FSD and of the campaign to challenge its reductionist approach to women's sexual problems.

Examines the growth of awareness of mood stabilization and of bipolar disorders, as well as the sensationalistic attitudes towards both.

Argues that disease mongering turns healthy people into patients, wastes precious resources, and causes iatrogenic harm.

Offers a critique of exclusively biomedical approaches to personal and public health. Also looks at the medicalization of personal and social problems, the commodification of health care, and questions of agency, responsibility and control.

Women's health issues have in recent years become the focus for an unprecedented degree of sophisticated technologic incursion. While much of rapid technologic advances, confined as it largely is to the richest societies of the globe, has perhaps enabled women to hold their place in the workforce, it has also taken the natural biological processes from the quiet path of individual lives and put them into the hands of expert management. Women's health is now similar to other consumer goods, available for purchase alongside the many commodities of the modern urban lifestyle.

Challenges the medicalization of women's sexual problems. Provides a manual of activities for workshops and classes to facilitate a broader understanding of sexuality and of how medicalization is changing both our sexual experiences and our ideas about sex.

Examines the medicalization of women's reproductive functions, including treating normal health cycles as problems or illnesses.

Examines problems of pharmaceuticals and their overuse in Germany, defined as the problem of medicalisation. Compares and contrasts effects in some Third World southern countries. Encourages consumer awareness and skepticism.