When public health people such as myself, or researchers in general, start discussing an issue with the intent of "doing something about it", it is called problematizing.
You make something a problem and then you address it.
When pharmaceutical companies want to treat something with pills or expensive diagnostics, they medicalize it. That is the term I saw this week in a research article I downloaded but have not been able to read.
In the study, scientists reviewed cases of insomnia and other problems related to sleeping and found a significant increase in pharmaceutical treatment for them. The research headline, was "The Medicalization of Sleeplessness."
I absolutely agree with what I think the researchers concluded - a reliance on medications for sleep disturbance has been created through direct to consumer and physician marketing of pills purported to aid in sleep. These medications can be addictive and have sometimes serious side effects.
The full text article was not available to share. Here is the abstract.
Sleeplessness, a universal condition with diverse causes, may be increasingly diagnosed and treated (or medicalized) as insomnia. We examined the trend in sleeplessness complaints, diagnoses, and prescriptions of sedative hypnotics in physician office visits from 1993 to 2007. Consistent with the medicalization hypothesis, sleeplessness complaints and insomnia diagnoses increased over time and were far outpaced by prescriptions for sedative hypnotics. Insomnia may be a public health concern, but potential overtreatment with marginally effective, expensive medi cations with nontrivial side effects raises definite population health concerns.
Citation:
The Medicalization of Sleeplessness: A Public Health Concern
