title: [What is a disease?].
abstract: The concept of disease is more complex than it may seem. Disease is both a natural category and a social construction. Medical anthropology distinguishes between three realities under the different words defining "disease": the biological abnormalities (disease), the subjective experience of altered physical state (illness), and the process of socialization of pathological episodes (sickness). The constructivist perspective of the sociology of science shows that scientific knowledge reflects cultural beliefs and social values. A diagnosis is "constructed" in the interaction of patients and physicians, and of their respective representations of disease, in a given historical and social contex. The example of fibromyalgia has been chosen to illustrate this social construction of diagnostic categories.
authors.affiliation: Service de médecine interne, hôpital Nord, CHU de Saint-Etienne, France.
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Cathébras
mesh_terms: D000883:Anthropology; D004194:Disease; D005356:Fibromyalgia; D006801:Humans; D010817:Physician-Patient Relations; D012586:Science; D012961:Sociology
vernacular_title: Qu'est-ce qu'une maladie?