pathologize
English
Alternative forms
Etymology
Etymology tree
Verb
pathologize (third-person singular simple present pathologizes, present participle pathologizing, simple past and past participle pathologized)
- (transitive) To characterize as a pathology or disease; to characterize (a person) as suffering from a disease.
- Near-synonym: medicalize
- Some childhood behavior has been pathologized as attention-deficit disorder.
- 2001 December 16, Melanie Thernstrom, “Pain, the Disease”, in The New York Times Magazine[1], New York, N.Y.: The New York Times Company, →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 21 August 2025:
- Many pain patients have had doctors who pathologized them, told them their pain was unreal.
- 2009, Joseph G. Ponterotto et al., Handbook of Multicultural Counseling, →ISBN, page 142:
- My automatic reaction was to deal with the anxiety he evoked in me by pathologizing him as paranoid and obsessive compulsive.
- 2014, Sharlene Nagy Hesse-Biber, Feminist Research Practice: A Primer, 2nd edition, Los Angeles, C.A. […]: SAGE, →ISBN, page 63:
- Their results showed that cisgenderist language is commonplace in professional communications between psychologists about children who self-defined their gender, that the most pathologizing language is found in literature by mental health professionals, and that those most closely tied to the most prolific author in the field through publication are most likely to use language that pathologizes and misgenders children.
Derived terms
Translations
to characterize as a pathology or disease; to characterize (a person) as suffering from a disease
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