著者

野島 那津子

出版者

社会学研究会

雑誌

ソシオロジ (ISSN:05841380)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.59, no.3, pp.3-19, 2015

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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the difficulties when suffering from an incompletely medicalized disease and the effects of its diagnosis using the narratives of spasmodic dysphonia sufferers. Spasmodic dysphonia (SD) is a chronic voice disorder. It leads to a characteristic strained and strangled voice (Gündel et al. 2007). Its etiology is unknown and there is no fundamental treatment. In Japan, SD is a rare disease and most physicians have little experience treating it. Few physicians can diagnose SD. In addition, as SD is virtually unknown among the public, its characteristic voice is not perceived as a symptom of a disease, neither by others nor by sufferers themselves. Considering this situation, we can say that SD is an incompletely medicalized disease. While medicalization has been criticized for its aspect of social control and its tendency to individualize social problems, incomplete medicalization has been relatively less discussed and few empirical studies of those diseases have been conducted. In this paper, I focus on SD as an example of incomplete medicalization and examine the problems of incomplete medicalization from sufferer's point of view.Based on interviews with fifteen people suffering from SD, the three main difficulties identified are: an inability to explain their condition and loneliness, inappropriate definition of a SD's unique voice by others, and a visible negative reaction. One common underlying cause for these difficulties is the lack of a definitive diagnosis. Receiving a diagnosis could be an opportunity to reduce those difficulties. Obtaining a diagnosis opens possibilities of refusing incorrect interpretations, providing plausible explanations and disclosing their suffering to others. In the case of SD, I suggest that simply suffering does not constitute a "disease" in our society. Adequate medical diagnosis is a requisite condition for the social existence of the "disease."