Kontakt 2012, 14(2):177-184 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2012.020

Medical model - biomedical discourse upon social workHealth and Social Sciences - Original article

Jana Levická
Trnavská univerzita v Trnave, Fakulta zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce, katedra sociálnej práce
Univerzita Hradec Králové, Ústav sociální práce

The social work, as a branch of theory and practice renewed in the Slovak Republic 20 years ago, searches for its identity, providing that the existing discourse oscillates between attempts to define it as a scientific discipline, which is associated with efforts aimed at a consensus concerning paradigm or paradigms of the social works, and attempts to establish the social work just as a specific field of practice, which does not call for its own scientific and research basis. In this quarrel, domestic authors support their opinions by scientific authorities and widely accepted foreign theoretical sources, which is legitimate, since there is still a lack of sufficient domestic sources on the one hand, and if we try to establish the modern Slovak social work, we cannot do so without reflecting the foreign discourse in this field on the other hand. The "fairness" in the social work should suggest us that we have to admit that the authorities and sources chosen here do not always represent most objective knowledge in the social work and that they can sometimes be just opinions of an individual foreign colleague, even if he/she is a known and accepted professional. In our uncertainty, we tend to consider one clear fact and refuse everything else instead of bringing and offering different views as educators. In her efforts to change this condition, the author offers a view of the biomedical discourse upon the social work in Slovakia rather known as a social work model, which is one of ever topical theoretical discourse upon the social work. After a period of a certain decline accompanying the discourse in the 1970's to 1980's, a new revival was experienced just at the end of the last millennium. This new wave of the biomedical discourse has been particularly induced by the following facts: population changes (ageing of the population), increase in the occurrence of mental diseases in the population, increase in the incidence of civilisation diseases, inter alia those caused by unsound style of life, etc. These diseases have not already been solely considered as an issue of medical interest for a long time, since they also exert impacts in the field of national economies of particular countries because of their associations with costs of the medical care, and long-term sick leave and subsequent disability negatively affecting public finances.

Keywords: theory; models; discourses; medical model; biomedical discourse

Received: January 29, 2012; Accepted: March 29, 2012; Published: June 22, 2012  Show citation

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Levická J. Medical model - biomedical discourse upon social work. Kontakt. 2012;14(2):177-184. doi: 10.32725/kont.2012.020.
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