Most research on compliance with medical regimens takes a doctor-centered perspective and proceeds from certain assumptions. This paper presents an alternative, patient-centered approach to managing medications, using data from 80 in-depth interviews of people with epilepsy. This approach...

Medicalization is the process by which non-medical problems become defined and treated as medical problems, usually as illnesses or disorders. There has been growing concern with the possibility that medicalization is driving increased health care costs. In this paper we estimate the medical...

In the 1980s worksite health promotion or wellness programs have become more common in American corporations. Corporations see them as a way to control rising health care costs and to improve employee health. This paper examines participants' perspectives on participation in a health and fitness...

This concluding essay discusses some crucial methodological issues raised by other papers in this issue. It also suggests directions for further conceptual development concerning the qualitative research on chronic illness.

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has been medicalized in the United States since the 1960s. Primarily used in North America until the 1990s, ADHD diagnosis and treatment have increasingly been applied internationally. After documenting the expansion of ADHD in a global context,...