HSC210: Health Sociology - Health outcomes for Indigenous Australians - Health Assignment Help

Assignment Task:

Question 1
Despite increases in funding, explain why in Australia, Indigenous health outcomes are still an issue? Provide examples to illustrate your argument.

Health outcomes for Indigenous Australians are persistently inequitable. Despite increased funding and the implementation of federally funded projects such as the ‘Closing the Gap’ health campaign, there are still significant discrepancies in health outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The ‘Closing the Gap’ campaign aims to close, or at least considerably reduce the gaps in life expectancy, child mortality, and educational and employment outcomes

Question 2
Psychiatry can be viewed as an institute of social control. Draw on sociological theories and examples to discuss this statement.

Video requests that you draw on theories from unit – refer to table in textbook to find theory that discusses behaviour, control and stigma. 

What does psychiatry aim to do? What does it claim to be?

• The objective of psychiatric intervention is to relieve mental suffering and improve the lives of those affected by mental, emotional, and behavioural disorders.

How does this chosen theory explain how psychiatry is an institution of social control – use examples to support: 

• Psychiatrists have a legal responsibility to assess and manage risk on behalf of the community within in which they practice. This permits them the social control to strip patients of their liberties and forcefully treat them against their will within an approved legal framework.
  Ventriglio, A., & Bhugra, D. (2015). Psychiatry's Social Control and Patients' Rights. East Asian Archives of Psychiatry, 25(4), 143-145.

• There is political support in the legalisation of these entitlements – it is government sanctioned control.

• Issues can arise in the way that mental, emotional, and behavioural issues are determined – to some degree this is subjective and can rely on social and cultural practices of the given community in which the psychiatric care is being practiced. For example, homosexuality was once considered a mental illness and presumably continues to be treated this way in some parts of the world (need reference to support).

• In this way, psychiatry can be used as a tool to enforce social norms. It medicalises that which it considers socially undesirable.

• Important to consider the power dynamics at play between a psychiatric physician and a patient.

• There is also a tendency of psychiatric institutions to marginalise or further stigmatise already disempowered groups and individuals. There is often a lack sensitivity to the ways in which structural inequalities play a role in the social production of psychopathology itself – to further explain this you may wish to refer to the social determinants of health.

• Psychiatric facilities also operate in a very controlled environment, patients are required to wake, eat, sleep, engage in activities in a very routine structure, this could be an example of a loss of autonomy. Foucault would be a good point of reference if you want to explore that idea more. 

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