Medicalization refers to the process in which conditions and behaviors are labeled and treated as medical issues. Critics have labeled this over-medicalization or disease mongering, since by labeling normal health variants as pathological states, medical industries have made enormous profits.

What is meant by the medicalization of illness?

Medicalization means 'to make medical' or more specifically the process by which previously nonmedical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually as diseases or disorders.

How did Irving Zola define medicalisation?

1. Zola defined medicalisation as the process of 'making medicine and the labels “healthy” and “ill” relevant to an ever. increasing part of human existence' (1972:487; his emphasis), suggesting as had Pitts, that illness is socially defined or. 'constructed'.