Non-medical Healthcare. Sociological and Formal-Legal Selected Aspects

Abstract

The article refers to the research project implemented in the years 1990-2010, which aim was to build the foundations for the sociology of non-medical healthcare. The following assumptions were made: (1) the wide and growing phenomenon of Poles’ mass consumption of methods and techniques not recognized by conventional medicine and offered by persons without formal medical education, have not yet been scientifically described and interpreted, (2) new phenomena and social processes accompanying a systemic transformation in Poland are an accelerator and a catalyst for the increased range of health needs catered for outside the official system of the Health Service. The purpose of the study was the analysis and interpretation of social phenomena concentrated around the unconventional healthcare and their description in terms of the sociology of health and illness. Of particular importance was the theoretical identification of non-medical healthcare and the assessment of the scope of its differences from traditional medicine. Moreover, the study analyzed the state of research in this area, determined the nature of non-professional forms of treatment of the disease in a historical perspective, and identified past and present conditioning (micro-, mezo- and macro-social) of the system of health treatments offered by laymen outside the official Health Service.