In many ways, the entire Western healthcare system is built around normalisation. The fact that it is the job of ‘the system’, and all those that work within it, to identify those people who are ill, sick, or suffering, and to offer them a cure, is so deeply entrenched in the way health services work that it would be hard to imagine it otherwise. But imagine it otherwise we must, or else the more problematic aspects of the approach remain hidden. Firstly, we should remember that normalisation is a social construct. What this means is that there is no object that you can point to to say “that is normalisation right there”. It is an idea; an invention, based on a set of principles that … [Read more...] about Critique of the biomedical model #4 – Standard Deviation