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Medicalize vs Pathologize - What's the difference?

medicalize | pathologize |

In transitive terms the difference between medicalize and pathologize

is that medicalize is to make medical; to convert or reduce to a branch of medicine while pathologize is to characterize as a pathology or disease; to characterize (a person) as suffering from a disease.

medicalize

English

Alternative forms

* medicalise

Verb

(medicaliz)
  • To make medical; to convert or reduce to a branch of medicine.
  • * 1996 , Dion Farquhar, The Other Machine: Discourse and Reproductive Technologies
    • The sexual objectification and violation of women is made invisible because technological reproduction has turned medicalized pornography into education...
  • * 1999 , Judith Rooks, Charles S Mahan, Midwifery and Childbirth
    • Early in this century American obstetrics became committed to a path that has led to a highly medicalized approach to the care of women during pregnancy...
  • * 2004 , Leonore Tiefer, Sex is Not a Natural Act and Other Essays
    • ...sexual problems would have to be repackaged and medicalized .

    Anagrams

    *

    pathologize

    English

    Alternative forms

    * pathologise

    Verb

    (pathologiz)
  • To characterize as a pathology or disease; to characterize (a person) as suffering from a disease.
  • :Some childhood behavior has been pathologized as attention-deficit disorder.
  • * 2001 Dec. 16, , " Pain, the Disease," New York Times (retrieved 12 July 2011):
    • Many pain patients have had doctors who pathologized them, told them their pain was unreal.
  • * 2007 July 23, Rachel Endo, " Inbox," Time :
    • To pathologize China's industries as corrupt not only reeks of centuries-old Yellow Peril rhetoric but also fails to acknowledge the shortcomings of transnational regulations.
  • * 2009 , Joseph G. Ponterotto et al.'', ''Handbook of Multicultural Counseling , ISBN 9781412964326, p. 142:
    • My automatic reaction was to deal with the anxiety he evoked in me by pathologizing him as paranoid and obsessive compulsive.