Denis Pereira Gray,  Eleanor White,  and Ginny Russell,  Medicalisation in the UK: changing dynamics, but still ongoing J R Soc Med 0141076815600908, first published on October 2, 2015 doi:10.1177/0141076815600908

[…] general medical practice has reversed from being mainly reactive work with doctors responding to patients’ symptoms, to a pro-active mass assessment of risk with extensive issuing of treatments, increasingly for people without symptoms at all.

Statins are the model, […]

Medicalisation is driven by the progressive lowering of treatment thresholds in diseases like hypertension. Taking the blood pressure of symptom-free people is screening. Finding high blood pressure and treating it turns approximately 13% of the population into patients. Medicalisation means medication for millions. […]

People are mass medicating themselves […]

Computerisation of general practice records is a little understood driver. At-risk groups are now routinely identified and sent appointments. […] General practitioners have thus become leading agents of medicalisation.