1. plural of medicalization; the process of treating or classifying a non-medical condition, behavior, or social issue as a medical problem requiring medical intervention
Usage: often used in sociology, anthropology, and medical humanities to describe how social or behavioral phenomena become framed as diseases or disorders; frequently appears in academic and critical discourse

Examples

• Critics argue that the medicalizations of childhood shyness and normal grief have expanded the scope of psychiatric diagnosis.
• The medicalizations of various social problems reflect changing cultural attitudes toward medicine and health.
• Scholars study the medicalizations of conditions like ADHD to understand how society defines illness.
• Some feminists challenge the medicalizations of menopause, viewing it as a natural life stage rather than a disease.
• The medicalizations of obesity have sparked debate about whether it should be treated primarily as a medical condition.
• Historical medicalizations of homosexuality demonstrate how medical categories can shift over time.
• Public health experts examine the medicalizations of poverty-related conditions to improve health equity.