Kroll-Smith Steve
Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 27402, USA.
Sociol Health Illn. 2003 Sep;25(6):625-43. doi: 10.1111/1467-9566.00362.
Problem sleepiness is emerging as a medical problem in the US and Britain. Though an increasingly salient complaint, clinical medicine is only peripherally involved in the diagnosis and treatment of sleep troubles. Paramount in shaping public perceptions and experiences of sleep are the popular media. The apparent chasm between self-reported sleep troubles and the routine medical gaze is the point of departure for this inquiry. Aided by the idea of rhetorical authority, a case is made for the conspicuous influence of newspapers, magazines and the Internet in shaping a persuasive cultural directive to become conscious of soporific states and their possible deleterious consequences. Attending to this cultural directive, a growing number of people are self-diagnosing with a novel sleep disorder, excessive daytime sleepiness. The increasing significance of popular culture in the creation of medical troubles summons an alternative version of medical sociology. A limited case for this claim is made by revisiting two key ideas in this field: naming diseases and the classic distinction between illness and disease.
在美国和英国，问题性嗜睡正逐渐成为一个医学问题。尽管这一抱怨日益突出，但临床医学在睡眠问题的诊断和治疗中仅处于边缘地位。塑造公众对睡眠的认知和体验的主要力量是大众媒体。自我报告的睡眠问题与常规医学关注之间明显的差距是本研究的出发点。借助修辞权威的概念，本文论证了报纸、杂志和互联网在塑造一种有说服力的文化指令方面的显著影响，该指令促使人们意识到嗜睡状态及其可能的有害后果。遵循这一文化指令，越来越多的人自我诊断出一种新的睡眠障碍——白天过度嗜睡。大众文化在制造医学问题方面日益重要，这催生了医学社会学的一个替代版本。通过重新审视该领域的两个关键概念：疾病命名以及疾病与病患的经典区分，本文对这一观点进行了有限的论证。
