ArticleBMJ open2012
What is a disease? Perspectives of the public, health professionals and legislators.
Article in BMJ open, 2012. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Current and Potential Approaches for Defining Disease Signatures: a Systematic Review.Journal of molecular neuroscience : MN · 2019Pooled it
- Intensive care of the very old - questioning the relationship between illness severity and the moral imperative to deliver life-saving care.Philosophy, ethics, and humanities in medicine : PEHM · 2025Article
- Hashimoto's thyroiditis- What's in a name?Hormones (Athens, Greece) · 2025Review
- Is pregnancy a disease? A normative approach.Journal of medical ethics · 2024Article
- Chronic cough as a disease.ERJ open research · 2024Review
- Comparison of Vaginal Pessaries to Standard Care or Pelvic Floor Muscle Training for Treating Postpartum Urinary Incontinence: a Pragmatic Randomized Controlled Trial.Geburtshilfe und Frauenheilkunde · 2024Article
- Should we promote alcohol problems as a continuum? Implications for policy and practice.Drugs (Abingdon, England) · 2024Article
- Gambling and Gambling Problem Perception Questionnaire as a tool to evaluate professionals' attitudes towards problem gamblers and training programmes in Japan.Nordisk alkohol- & narkotikatidskrift : NAT · 2022Article
- Gender- and age-stratified analyses of gambling disorder in Finland between 2011 and 2020 based on administrative registers.Nordisk alkohol- & narkotikatidskrift : NAT · 2022Article
- Review
- Pharmacological Neuroenhancement: Current Aspects of Categorization, Epidemiology, Pharmacology, Drug Development, Ethics, and Future Perspectives.Neural plasticity · 2021Review
- Making and managing medical anomalies: Exploring the classification of 'medically unexplained symptoms'.Social studies of science · 2020Article
- Diagnostic Criteria for Fibromyalgia: Critical Review and Future Perspectives.Journal of clinical medicine · 2020Review
- Public, health professional and legislator perspectives on the concept of psychiatric disease: a population-based survey.BMJ open · 2019Observational
- Systems Medicine Disease: Disease Classification and Scalability Beyond Networks and Boundary Conditions.Frontiers in bioengineering and biotechnology · 2018Article
- Urinary incontinence in women.Nature reviews. Disease primers · 2017Review
- Labelling people as 'High Risk': A tyranny of eminence?British journal of sports medicine · 2016Article
- Cystic fibrosis: to screen or not to screen? Involving a Citizens' jury in decisions on screening carrier.Health expectations : an international journal of public participation in health care and health policy · 2015Article
- In a class of their own: the Danish public considers obesity less deserving of treatment compared with smoking-related diseases.European journal of clinical nutrition · 2015Article
- Classifying aging as a disease in the context of ICD-11.Frontiers in genetics · 2015Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo assess the perception of diseases and the willingness to use public-tax revenue for their treatment among relevant stakeholders.
designA population-based, cross-sectional mailed survey.
settingFinland.
participants3000 laypeople, 1500 doctors, 1500 nurses (randomly identified from the databases of the Finnish Population Register, the Finnish Medical Association and the Finnish Nurses Association) and all 200 parliament members.
main outcome measuresRespondents' perspectives on a five-point Likert scale on two claims on 60 states of being: '(This state of being) is a disease'; and '(This state of being) should be treated with public tax revenue'.
resultsOf the 6200 individuals approached, 3280 (53%) responded. Of the 60 states of being, ≥80% of respondents considered 12 to be diseases (Likert scale responses of '4' and '5') and five not to be diseases (Likert scale responses of '1' and '2'). There was considerable variability in most states, and great variability in 10 (≥20% of respondents of all groups considered it a disease and ≥20% rejected as a disease). Doctors were more inclined to consider states of being as diseases than laypeople; nurses and members were intermediate (p<0.001), but all groups showed large variability. Responses to the two claims were very strongly correlated (r=0.96 (95% CI 0.94 to 0.98); p<0.001).
conclusionsThere is large disagreement among the public, health professionals and legislators regarding the classification of states of being as diseases and whether their management should be publicly funded. Understanding attitudinal differences can help to enlighten social discourse on a number of contentious public policy issues.
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.