Paying extra attention to the likelihood of acquiring potentially-dangerous diseases in the future is now dubbed as the "Angelina Jolie Syndrome," a new study warns. Fear of sickness is linked to highly commercialized standards of health and beauty that leads people to take preventive actions for hypothetical illness.
The commercialization of health standards in Western culture has led to a dictatorial self-preserving behavior called healthism. Published online via Journal of Social Policy Studies, the study tackles the issue on healthism as being similar to eugenics or a set of beliefs that intends to improve genetic quality of the human population.
However, researchers pointed out that the aim of individuals to reach the standards of health may affect their desire to undergo procedures in order to cure illness through hypercorrection. This includes undergoing surgery, even on a well and healthy body.
Media mentioned the 'Angelina Jolie syndrome' wherein an increased attention is focused on the chances of having diseases deemed as dangerous like cancer. Thus, they apply drastic measures to prevent these diseases from happening.
Aside from removing organs that could harbor cancer cells, other means of healthism are through plastic surgery, diets and consumption of organic food. In fact, the emergence of multiple apps on mobile devices that help in health monitoring has boomed in the last few years.
"Popular healthcare policy today often shifts the responsibility for health from healthcare institutions to individuals themselves, and shifts the focus from treatment to prevention, including prevention of even purely hypothetical pathologies," Evgenia Golman, from Russia's National Research University Higher School of Economics said.
Though preventive medicine and health care is good to avert the likelihood of many diseases, can save not only lives but also finances, exaggerated attention could lead to healthism. If the importance of preventive medicine is not well understood properly, it can cause mass neurosis and obsession.
Healthism can impose 'healthy standards' and if people won't fit into what is considered normal or healthy, it may lead to discrimination.
"The less an individual complies with contemporary standards of a healthy lifestyle (healthy nutrition, exercise etc) and appearance (slim and attractive body), the more they risk being negatively evaluated in terms of their personal and professional qualities," Golman added.
Photo: Gage Skidmore | Flickr
