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In our society, there are some trends that are not exciting. We are living increasingly in an aging society and we are becoming fatter (globesity). Moreover, we are facing an alarming decline in physical activity (PA) worldwide. In this context, chronic diseases are booming and health expenditures are skyrocketing. Stimulating PA is likely the best way to reduce the burden of disease and increase the social, psychological, and economic well-being of a community. In this chapter, two projects aimed at increasing PA among individuals are presented. The key point of the two projects is that they medicalize PA. The first project was carried out in Italy. A series of doctors started to “prescribe” PA as if it were a medicine. Therefore, PA is presented as a real cure to treat diseases and pathologies. The other project was supported by a private enterprise. The “concept” of the project is summarized as follows: “The quantity and quality of the physical activity carried out by the patient should be considered by the general practitioner as a clinical parameter as well as other parameters, such as blood pressure, weight, and glucose level.” It is possible that the success of these two initiatives stems from the fact that the biomedical complex has a strong influence on the part of the population. It is very effective to use a reliable source to spread a health promotion message. It becomes a medicalization without pathologization and a form of medicalization without pharmacologicalization. In Conrad’s (2007) words, it becomes a conceptual medicalization.

Purpose – To examine debates within the transgender rights movement over the GID diagnosis in order to demonstrate how diagnosis can be resisted as a source of stigma and social control at the same time that it is embraced as a means of legitimating experience and gaining access to resources, including medical services.

Methodology/approach – This chapter draws on qualitative data from: in-depth interviews with transgender rights activists and advocates, participant observation in transgender health care and activism settings, and content analysis of print and web-based materials on transgender health.

Findings – Transgender rights activists and advocates overwhelmingly reject the pathologization of gender variance. However, some actors advocate complete demedicalization, while others advocate diagnostic reform. Actors' advocacy for each position is influenced by the perceived costs versus benefits of diagnosis.

Social implications – The findings of this research shed light on the multiple and often contradictory effects of diagnosis. Diagnoses can both normalize and stigmatize. They can function to allow or deny access to medical services and they can support or act as barriers to legal rights and protections. Understanding these contradictory effects is essential to understanding contests over diagnosis, including the contemporary debate over GID.

Originality/value of paper – Through examination of an intra-constituent contest over diagnosis, this research demonstrates the need to distinguish medicalization from pathologization and illustrates the importance of examining the multiple and contradictory effects of diagnosis, both in and outside of medical settings.

The biomedical paradigm enjoys growing importance in our society. Biomedicine (e.g., Genetics) seems to occupy the position once held by religion and politics. In this context, every trivial problem of daily life is thought to require an appropriate remedy, and perfect health becomes a paramount value, especially within the upper class.

Medicalization is not only promoted by doctors. Today, other engines of medicalization are also available. These include pharmaceutical companies through marketing, advertising, and disease mongering; active consumers who seek a pharmacological solution – a magic bullet – to solve non-organic problems; technology, because highly sensitive diagnostic tools can now detect potential abnormalities even in very low quantities; and the culture of risk, which is connected to the evolution of diagnostic tools, because it is now always possible to be at risk of something.

The parts of life today considered pathological or quasi-pathological are ever increasing shyness, sadness, imperfect blood pressure, or glucose levels. Progressing editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) – the text from which diagnoses of mental illnesses are made – reveal a growing number of syndromes. These “diseases” are diagnosed on the grounds of certain symptoms and the number of weeks they last (quantification). Smartphones, with their tremendous capacity for data collection, contribute to a growth in self-diagnoses. For example, invited to log our every moment of sadness through a “trustworthy” avatar from our app (gamification), we can easily make too much of normal moments of discomfort, immediately seeing them – with a simple computation – transformed into something pathological in need of a cure.

Purpose – To explore the ideological effects and social control potential of diagnostic biopsychiatry and encourage the sociology of diagnosis to retain key insights of early medicalization scholarship.

Methodology – As the sociology of diagnosis emerges from medicalization, it is imperative that the new sub-specialty retains the critical edge of the early scholarship. With this in mind the paper reviews key aspects of the medicalization thesis, emphasizing the links between medical definitions and social control processes (e.g. Conrad, 1992; Conrad & Schneider, 1992; Zola, 1972). Based on this review scholars are urged to be mindful of the “diagnostic imaginary” -- a way of thinking that conceals the presence of the social in diagnoses, and which closes off critical analysis of the existential-connectedness and political nature of diagnoses.

Findings – The paradigm shift from dynamic to diagnostic psychiatry in DSM-III opened the door to a new biomedical model that has enhanced American psychiatry's scientific aura and prestige. With the increased presence and ordinariness of diagnoses in everyday life, an illusory view of diagnoses as scientific entities free of cultural ties has emerged, intensifying the dangers of medical social control.

Social implications – By illustrating that diagnoses are cultural objects imbued with political meaning, the ideological effects and social control potential of diagnostic biopsychiatry may be mitigated.

In this chapter, the authors discuss the results of research carried out on a sample of students at an elite university in the northeastern United States. The focus of the research was the interpretations that the students gave to a period of digital meditation. Meditation, yoga, and mindfulness have boomed in popularity over the past few years. Several factors are responsible of our “age of anxiety.” The de-standardization of life trajectories makes people freer (at least apparently) but requires more choices and, thus, reduces the sense of security. According to Rosa (2010), anxiety has intensified due to social acceleration. Therefore, it is not surprising that we sleep less than before. However, sleep loss is not just due to stress. According to Crary (2013), capitalism produces a consumer who should be able to buy “7/24.” Consequently, the chances of consumption should not have temporal boundaries. In sum, it is not surprising that there are numerous apps to cope with anxiety. Going back to the research, one result should be mentioned: several students have used biomedical jargon to describe the effects of meditation. Someone spoke of “digital therapy” referring to meditation. Moreover, some affirmed that the perception that they had of their own body had changed; thus, they were more keen on the quantifiable aspects of bodily health. In general, students found meditation as a very useful “therapy” for a quick fix for the many stresses of college. This is why we called it a “positive” medicalization.

Medicalization is the increasing social control of the everyday by medical experts. It is a key concept in the sociology of health and illness because it sees medicine as not merely a scientific endeavor, but a social one as well. Medicalization is a “process whereby more and more of everyday life has come under medical dominion, influence, and supervision” (Zola, 1983, p. 295); previously these areas of everyday life were viewed in religious or moral terms (Conrad & Schneider, 1980; Weeks, 2003). More specifically, medicalization is the process of “defining a problem in medical terms, using medical language to describe a problem, adopting a medical framework to understand a problem, or using a medical intervention to ‘treat’ it” (Conrad, 1992, p. 211). Sociologists have used this concept to describe the shift in the site of decision-making and knowledge about health from the lay public to the medical profession.