Explain How Three Sociological Perspectives Can Relate To Health and Ill Health and Consider Patterns/Trends in Health and Illness amongst Different Social Groups

This essay will be explaining whether or not sociological perspectives link to health and illness. The three theories I will be focusing on are feminism, Marxism and functionalism.

The Marxism theory states that society is split up into two main groups, the bourgeoisie, which are the rich group and the proletariat who are the poor group of society. The majority of society falls into the poorer proletariat group and the smaller part of society are the rich and the powerful. The two social group’s link to health and social include the amount of money that can be spent on food, health care, housing and how they choose to live their life. Rich people will have no problem affording a good quality diet; this will help them with their health as they are less likely to live off of processed foods. They will have no problems with health care as they can afford health treatment if the NHS cannot cover. They will have good quality housing that will have rarely any faults such as damp conditions which can affect health. All of these factors allow the richer part of society to live longer and healthier lives than the poor part of society. The poor part of society will not have a diet that is as good as the richer part as they cannot afford all of the healthy foods that are in a balanced diet and they will more likely eat processed foods that are not healthy and can affect their health by increasing their chances of having heart problems, diabetes, obesity and other medical problems. Poorer people will not be able to afford health care that they may need although they can use the NHS but it can be costly affording transportation there and back. They will not be able to afford good quality housing and more often be placed in a council house which is likely to be a poor quality and can have damp conditions which can increase the chance of having the flu and ammonia several times throughout the person’s life and it can put its toll on their body. Studies have shown that the poorer part of society is also more likely to smoke, drink and take drugs, this is seen as trying to escape reality so people with no money will be more likely to choose this lifestyle than someone who is richer. The Black Report (1980) has stated that they found a connection between social class and health. The higher class have better health and lived longer and the lower class have more health problems and live a shorter life.

The feminism theory states that woman are unequal to men and do not receive the same opportunities as men, they say men see woman as only having two functions, fulfilling sexual needs and domestic purposes. Studies have shown that women are more likely to get depression than men (psychologytoday2012) but men have a higher suicide rate, this shows that men are less likely to admit they have depression. Feminist state that woman have a higher