An essay entitled ‘We Are Turning Too Many People Into Medical Patients’ in the Wall Street Journal (17 March 2025) is interesting to read in relation to the concept of the sick and patient roles as understood in Social Role Valorization. (See for instance pages 35, 45, 63, 112 in the 4th expanded edition of the SRV monograph.) The essayist does not use the language of roles, but nonetheless the essay touches on topics such as the expectations surrounding the sick and patient roles, the power of language to shape role perceptions, and predictable devaluing and wounding consequences of the sick and patient roles when these become dominant in a person’s life.
A few interesting quotes from the essay:
- “People who worry about their health tend to worry about all aspects of their health. Once in the hospital system, they will have tests that pick up small differences that add to their concerns and see specialists who will try to appease them with a diagnosis. Once a perceived abnormality is found, doctors are compelled to keep looking, to monitor, to treat.”
- “Joining an illness support group can actually make symptoms worse by encouraging people to pay more worried attention to their body at a time when less attention is what they need.”
- “My concern is with expanding diagnostic labels to include people at the mild end. The milder a medical problem is, the smaller the impact of any intervention and the greater the risk of harm from treatment.”