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Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Illness narrative'
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Rodney-Haapala, Karin J. "Constructing Narrative Through Illness." Thesis, Corcoran College of Art + Design, 2014. http://pqdtopen.proquest.com/#viewpdf?dispub=1557693.
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Transformative learning theory, an andragogical (adult) theory, is developed from the psychoanalytical theories of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung and later formalized by sociologist, Jack Mezirow. Incorporating transformative learning into a multidisciplinary perspective, specifically through art making and critical reflection, can read therapeutic results of confronting trauma and illness. Using qualitative arts based research methodologies such as autoethnography and autophotography to address the question, how might the use of Combat-Related PTSD as the foundation of a photographic and written inquiry trigger a transformative learning experience in both the artist-researcher and the viewer can be explored through the use of visual imagery and written narrative. These components are integral in constructing a cohesive narrative that may assists those who may suffer from illness and/ or trauma. As a noted method in art therapy, patients who are diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) utilize nonverbal communication, i.e. visual imagery, as an avenue to reconsolidate their memories and experiences. Using visual imagery, allows the internal narrative of the body to be reflected externally. The significance of the research is to explore art as a healing and therapeutic modality, individually and collectively, for those who suffer from Combat related Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
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Gwyn, Richard. "The voicing of illness : narrative and metaphor in accounts of illness experience." Thesis, Cardiff University, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.321364.
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Yau, Wing-kit Vicky. "Representing illness patients, monsters, and microbes /." Click to view the E-thesis via HKUTO, 2007. http://sunzi.lib.hku.hk/hkuto/record/B3786726X.
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Yau, Wing-kit Vicky, and 邱穎潔. "Representing illness: patients, monsters, andmicrobes." Thesis, The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong), 2007. http://hub.hku.hk/bib/B3786726X.
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Keller, Alyse. "Performing Narrative Medicine: Understanding Familial Chronic Illness through Performance." Scholar Commons, 2017. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6876.
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This study presents the process of creating a performance ethnography of my family’s narratives about familial chronic illness and disability. I label this process performing narrative medicine. By documenting and granularly analyzing the process of my performance ethnography, the following chapters provide a step-by-step discussion of how families communicate about chronic illness/disability through storytelling and humor, and how/what performance does as a method, metaphor and object of study to further our current communicative practices and understandings of chronic illness and disability in families. I argue that performing narrative medicine is a heuristic for families living with chronic illness and disability, and a method that may be used and applied outside the context of my own family.
The chapters in my dissertation directly address the following questions: How does my performance work as embodied knowledge to gain greater understanding of the lived experience of familial disability/chronic illness? How does the use of humor as a communicative construct, and performance ethnography work as a practice of “performing narrative medicine?” What are our scholarly stakes in performing narrative? How too might binding narrative medicine to performance inform how we do qualitative research? How do the respective motions of narrative medicine and research practices/principles of performance ethnography converge and cross-fertilize each other? Does a work like narrative medicine endow storytelling and performance with a consequentiality?
This performance ethnography of familial disability and chronic illness contributes to understandings of families dealing with chronic illness/disability, extends narrative medicine as a theoretical construct, and speaks to a long tradition of the practice of performance ethnography. Overall, performing narrative medicine reveals the underlying communication competencies at work in families living with chronic illness and disability. Through the use of humor and performance as a communication practice, I reveal the power of empathy. The power in realizing our own human capacities to relate to one another across differences, and continue the work of “living well.” This dissertation emphasizes the power of performance to constitute alternative ways of performing and understanding familial chronic illness, by emphasizing the work of creating, implementing and studying performance.
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Docherty, Deborah. "The narrative approach to understanding the chronic illness experience /." Thesis, McGill University, 2000. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=33459.
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This small exploratory study considers the use of the narrative approach in eliciting and understanding illness stories. The four participants, (two male and two female) range in age from 29 years to 74 years. They live with a variety of chronic illnesses (heart disease, Multiple Sclerosis, and Pick's disease). Narrative analysis of the four semi-structured transcribed interviews revealed four dominant themes: the emotional reaction to diagnosis; the role of stress in aggravating and coping with chronic illness; a view of death; the meaning attributed to illness.A postmodern perspective is employed to explicate the social construction of the notion of chronic illness. A critique of the medical discourse regarding chronic health challenges is offered.
This study invites social workers to consider their position of power and privilege as they learn new ways of listening to illness narratives.
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Brooks, Roslyn. "Therapeutic Narrative Illness Writing and the Quest for Healing." Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/663.
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This thesis examines how narratives of illness become therapeutic narratives. The method is to engage closely with (mainly Australian) texts - literary accounts of illness - in order to identify key elements that effect a healing function (healing is distinguished from cure). Textual analysis is placed in the frame of medical information about the relevant conditions, and theoretical perspectives that provide a cultural and historical setting for illness writing. Bio-medical discourse foregrounds the clinical process of diagnosis, investigation and treatment and relegates the personal meanings of illness to secondary place. The thesis explores ways in which the patient's account provides an alternative discourse that supplements - and at times challenges - the medical discourse. Illness foregrounds the body, and illness narratives confront the reality of embodied experience. Illness that is chronic or incurable, ageing, physical and mental decline, and the inescapable prospect of death confront the patient with the need to find meaning in experience. Narratives of illness may serve as ventilation, diversion or escape for the patient. They may provide practical help, information and consolation to family and carers, and others who suffer with the condition. These are valuable functions, but I argue that illness writing may embody more powerful therapeutic elements that transform and give meaning to the illness as part of the individual's life story. Key therapeutic functions identified are perversity, empowerment and transformation. Healing can begin with the empowerment of telling one's story. Illness stories may challenge the stigma and the subordination associated with disease. They can affirm a sense of belonging and community where illness intersects with other forms of marginalization. Powerful illness narratives are often characterised by perversity, overturning the assumptions of dominant cultural discourses - including those that place authority with the medical practitioner and demand acquiescence from the patient. The most powerful therapeutic narratives transform the story of illness into a new story.
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Brooks, Roslyn. "Therapeutic Narrative Illness Writing and the Quest for Healing." University of Sydney. English, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/2123/663.
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This thesis examines how narratives of illness become therapeutic narratives. The method is to engage closely with (mainly Australian) texts � literary accounts of illness � in order to identify key elements that effect a healing function (healing is distinguished from cure). Textual analysis is placed in the frame of medical information about the relevant conditions, and theoretical perspectives that provide a cultural and historical setting for illness writing. Bio-medical discourse foregrounds the clinical process of diagnosis, investigation and treatment and relegates the personal meanings of illness to secondary place. The thesis explores ways in which the patient�s account provides an alternative discourse that supplements � and at times challenges � the medical discourse. Illness foregrounds the body, and illness narratives confront the reality of embodied experience. Illness that is chronic or incurable, ageing, physical and mental decline, and the inescapable prospect of death confront the patient with the need to find meaning in experience. Narratives of illness may serve as ventilation, diversion or escape for the patient. They may provide practical help, information and consolation to family and carers, and others who suffer with the condition. These are valuable functions, but I argue that illness writing may embody more powerful therapeutic elements that transform and give meaning to the illness as part of the individual�s life story. Key therapeutic functions identified are perversity, empowerment and transformation. Healing can begin with the empowerment of telling one�s story. Illness stories may challenge the stigma and the subordination associated with disease. They can affirm a sense of belonging and community where illness intersects with other forms of marginalization. Powerful illness narratives are often characterised by perversity, overturning the assumptions of dominant cultural discourses � including those that place authority with the medical practitioner and demand acquiescence from the patient. The most powerful therapeutic narratives transform the story of illness into a new story.
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Brzezinska, Magdalena. "Understanding ‘Illness’." Thesis, Uppsala University, Cultural Anthropology, 2004. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-4466.
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This study describes and analyses understanding ‘illness’ among clients and
leaders of the spiritual tradition Candomblé in Rio de Janeiro. The study
focuses on the individuals’ narratives of illness and of healing rituals within
the cult. Particular attention is given to the consultation ritual called jogo de
búzios, which is one of the main practices of finding the reason for the illness
as well as its cure. The emphasis in this study is on the necessity to look at
medical pluralism, the socio-individual context of illness and narrativity as an
intersubjective practice. The conclusion is reached that illness within
Candomblé ideology can be understood as disequilibrium in a person’s
lifeworld.
The individual is approached from within the plurimedical context of
both biomedical and Candomblé healing tradition in Rio. Here it is argued that
the person creates meaning of the illness in relation to different aspects of his
lifeworld. The individual’s lifeworld includes the urban context of Rio de
Janeiro; therefore a brief discussion is developed about how this context
influences the individual meaning production of the illness. The Candomblé
house is described with its social structure and other elements that are
important for understanding how the cult might work for the clients as an
alternative and/or complementary medical treatment.
The study progressively introduces and analyses the lifestories of the
individuals that approach the Candomblé cult in order to seek treatment. It
also is concerned with stories of the Candomblé leaders and their view on the
phenomenology of the Body, the Self and the social milieu of the person.
Finally, the study emphasises the importance of studies that focus on the
individual’s interpretation of the relations between the Self and the Body, and
the individual’s understanding of medical knowledge and practice.
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Tsope, Lindiwe. "A narrative study of patients’ illness experiences on antiretroviral treatment." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/63032.
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Eight female respondents, who have publicly disclosed their HIV-positive status on social media, were involved in a semi-structured in-depth interview process. Using the theoretical frameworks of symbolic interactionism and social constructionism, the study explores the effects of antiretroviral treatment on patients’ illness experiences, looking at the personal and social symbolisms and meanings attached to taking antiretrovirals. The study revealed a positive and inspirational aspect of living with HIV/AIDS and especially consuming antiretroviral therapy. It became evident that the knowledge participants had of antiretrovirals before consuming them was misguided and based more on false ‘general knowledge’ among laypersons than actual medical fact. Moreover, the study revealed that there is a social reconstruction of narratives that has taken place in each participant’s life due to consuming antiretrovirals. Publicly disclosing their statuses has also proved to have both negative and positive consequences for the individuals and for society at large. While there is a consensus that participants’ illness experiences are directly affected by antiretroviral treatment, each participant’s narrative is different, yet positive.
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Parke, Erin. "Chasing Zebras: Rediscovering Identity After Illness." Scholar Commons, 2016. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/6561.
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This autoethnographic study focuses on changing identity after experiencing a rare disease. The purpose of this study was to examine the ways in which identity shifts during an after a rare illness. Three research questions guided this study: How and in what ways has my identity as a teacher shifted as a result of my experience with major illness? How and in what ways have other aspects of my identity shifted as a result of my illness? How can the writing of my autoethnography influence the healing process and my understanding of identity?
The participant/researcher of this study was hospitalized with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, and subsequently lost her position as a high school teacher and was forced to find a position at a new school. Using Gee’s (2000/2001) concept of identity as an analytic lens, the researcher developed a narrative of her journey from illness back into the classroom. After analysis, she identified a transition from a traditional, knowledge-giver teacher role to the role of teacher as a facilitator. Another finding was the role confidence played in the recovery process. The researcher then offers suggestions for further research regarding teachers who return to the classroom after illness.
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Welch, Melissa Jane. "Decreased Visibility: A Narrative Analysis of Episodic Disability and Contested Illness." Scholar Commons, 2018. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7378.
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In the United States alone, disability touches the lives of a tremendous amount of people. An increased prevalence of chronic illness, coupled with an aging population means it is likely and perhaps inevitable that everyone will experience disability in one way or another over the course of their lifetime. However not everyone who is disabled is recognized as such. Culturally, the narrative of “the healthy disabled person,” – or someone who is healthy, permanently, predictably, and visibly disabled renders many people with chronic and episodic pain, fatigue, and illness as unrecognizable as disabled. Even though increasing numbers of disability scholars have begun to acknowledge that the embodied experiences of disability are far more fluid than the theoretically static divisions between healthy or ill, abled or disabled allow for, there has been little research that explores the experiences that exist in between these spaces In this dissertation I use narrative analysis to examine “who counts” as disabled in the United States, and why by exploring the interconnected narratives of disability at the cultural, institutional, and personal levels of society.
In the first of three substantive chapters I examine cultural narratives about contested illness published in The New York Times between 1999 and 2016. I argue that stigmatization of episodic illness and disability occurs when the reality of lived experiences contradict the cultural assumptions and expectations; namely that health and illness, disability, and ability are natural, discrete, and static states of being for physical bodies. In the second chapter I examine institutional narratives of disability as they are told in town hall meetings for the Americans with Disabilities Amendment Act. I argue that these narratives serve to distinguish between morally good people with disabilities who deserve to be protected and accommodated in the workplace, and those who would use disability as an excuse to take advantage of their employers. In the final substantive chapter, I examine how women with chronic and contested illness reconstruct their identities through narrative in an online forum. I argue that these online spaces are an important site from which these women are able to counter the stigmatization and isolation that results from the dominant narrative that portrays them as morally corrupt. In each of these three chapters I find that the shifting and unpredictable reality of bodies that appear normal, healthy, and abled sometimes, and periodically ill, impaired, and disabled others are at best culturally unrecognizable as disabled and at worst, subject to disbelief and hostility regarding their claims as such. I argue that in order to overcome the stigmatization and disbelief of invisible and episodic disability, we need a cultural reorientation towards the story of disability; one that moves away from the belief that it is something that only happens to a small number of people in society, and towards an understanding of disability as an inevitable experience for the majority of the population; and in doing so works towards a more inclusive society that is designed to meet the needs of an ever changing and diversifying population.
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Crawford, Stella. "The ways Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice represents mental illness." Thesis, Uppsala universitet, Institutionen för speldesign, 2019. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-409483.
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This thesis examines the ways Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Ninja Theory, 2017) represents mental illness and why the game is considered partly groundbreaking in the subject of mental health representation within video games. This examination is done by taking a brief overview of previous games tackling the same subject matter as well as examining how Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice represents psychosis narratively and mechanically. This is done through the method of player-as-analyst by playing the game all the way through once and viewing a full length playthrough video following the methodology and theory of Diane Carr (2014). The data gathered during play and viewing of the playthrough is then analyzed.Denna avhandling undersöker hur Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice (Ninja Theory, 2017) representerar mental ohälsa och varför spelet uppehålls som delvis banbrytande inom spel som behandlar mental ohälsa. Undersökningen i fråga är gjord via att göra en kort översikt av hur tidigare spel handlat samma ämne och ta en titt på hur Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice representerar psykos i sin mekanik och narrativ. Detta åstadkoms genom metoden Player-as-analyst genom att spela igenom hela spelet en gång och kolla igenom en playthrough video och genom att följa metodologi och teori av Diane Carr (2014). Datan samlad under spelningen och video tittandet sedan analyseras.
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Stringer, Helen. "The impossible story: Arthur W. Frank's "Chaos Narrative" and memoirs of madness." Thesis, Queensland University of Technology, 2019. https://eprints.qut.edu.au/135617/2/Helen_Stringer_Thesis.pdf.
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This practice-led project asks: how do writers of madness memoirs represent the discontinuity and incoherence of the madness experience, and how do I, as a writer, approach this? It finds that while the experience of madness is discontinuous and incoherent, writers choose to reconfigure their experiences into traditional narrative forms that adhere to expectations of continuity, coherence, and temporal linearity. As a practice-led project, in interrogating the research question, it comprises an academic exegesis, which employs the theories of sociologist, Arthur W. Frank, to justify discontinuous narrativisation and a madness memoir, entitled The Wolf.
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Rego, Virginia Marie. "You are my mirror : one teacher’s autobiographical narrative inquiry into mental illness." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/62570.
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This research is presented as an autobiographical narrative inquiry about one teacher’s experience of living with mental illness. The main objective of this research is to contribute to expanding our understanding of how our education systems must include acceptance and inclusion of the large number of students, educators, school trustees, education bureaucrats, parents and administrators who live with mental illness. According to the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, mental illness will impact one in two Canadians by age 40 with the onset of symptoms occurring during adolescence, making the school system an important public institution for recognizing and treating mental illness. Yet, there continues to be stigma and fear around mental illness, which may hinder peoples’ ability to recognize it in themselves or others.
The autobiographical texts contained in this dissertation emerged as I, the researcher, examined my own context in relation to who I was as a researcher, and in particular, as an educational researcher, and specifically, as a teacher, and even more specifically, a teacher with mental illness. My particular illnesses were anxiety and eating disorders. The texts are a collection of stories, journal entries, and report card comments interspersed with and analyzed in relation to literature that includes academic theory, research, poetry, and fiction. I am following in the tradition of others such as Pelias (2016) who puts themselves on display as a researcher “in the belief that an emotionally vulnerable, linguistically evocative, and sensuously poetic voice can place us closer to the subjects we wish to study” (p. 1). In this study I put mental illness on display to examine it from the perspective of curiosity and openness rather than from a place of stigma or fear.
I surmise that if a teacher’s educational responsibility is to be open to what Biesta (2013) pens is the call to act in the intervention of others, then one such act is showing up as a human being, with one’s struggles and vulnerabilities, and being open to those of others.Education, Faculty of
Educational Studies (EDST), Department of
Graduate
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Buscemi, Nicole Desiree. "Diagnosing narratives: illness, the case history, and Victorian fiction." Diss., University of Iowa, 2009. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/282.
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“Diagnosing Narratives: Illness, the Case History, and Victorian Fiction” explores how the medical case study competes with patients’ experiential accounts of disease in the development of popular nineteenth-century fictions. During most of the Victorian period, clinical medicine served as the primary producer of medical knowledge. At the same time, its objectification of the sufferer—epitomized by the case narrative, the most prevalent form of nineteenth-century medical writing—led to an increasingly distanced relationship between doctor and patient. I argue that the mid-century novel responds by featuring narrator-sufferers who co-opt aspects of the medical case in order to represent their own subjective experiences and rethink what constitutes medical knowledge. As the century came to a close, however, sciences of the laboratory, rather than the clinic, began to gain epistemological sway. In light of widespread skepticism regarding the possibility of translating discoveries made in the lab into effective bedside practices, I contend that popular novels and short stories now returned full circle to the clinical case approach as a valuable alternative to the laboratory. The result is late-century fiction structurally and thematically driven by the useful yet sometimes callous techniques of the diagnostician and his case method. I chart these shifts through an examination of works by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Robert Louis Stevenson, Bram Stoker, and Arthur Conan Doyle. My project illustrates the responses of these authors to prevailing power dynamics in the world of medicine and offers a new reading of the ways in which the Victorian preoccupation with disease shaped literary narrative.
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Pereira, Diego Araújo. "Da disease à illness : experiência de enfermidade de mulheres diagnosticadas com fibromialgia." Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, 2018. http://ri.ufs.br/jspui/handle/riufs/9284.
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Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPESWe all face the experience of pain in a given moment of our lives. More than a “physiological fact”, pain is an “existential fact”. When this pain becomes uninterrupted, it eliminates the structure of our everyday lives, jeopardizes our social relations, is addressed and in being so, affects the others, ceasing to be a private experience and becoming a public one. In an attempt to solve this problem, thousands of people daily resort to medical support and take to the treatment rooms not only their physical complaints, but all the affective, social and subjective repercussion that an illness state causes, and which makes up their health condition. In Brazil, 2,5% of these people are diagnosed with a pathology called fibromyalgia. From the point of view of biomedicine (disease), fibromyalgia is characterized as a syndrome that involves chronic pain in skeletal musculature, which attacks different body regions, being associated to fatigue, sleep disturbances and psychopathological symptoms, like anxiety and depression. However, the symptoms understood this way do not produce identifiable lesions, nor any anatomopathological substrate which evidences the disease and, thereby do not present laboratory parameters to guide both the diagnose and the interventions, forcing doctors to report to clinical parameters given by the patients’ speech. Facing the singularity of human suffering, in opposition to a universal pattern of human functioning. Because of this characteristic, the diagnose of fibromyalgia has been considered controversial and its treatment of difficult handling, since the biomedical model does not offer many tools to deal with the subjective and experiential dimension of the illness. In this work we seek to understand the fibromyalgia, or better what is designated as such by the biomedical knowledge (disease), in the perspective of the diagnosed subjects (illness). Attempting to understand which senses are built from the illness experience and which health care practices develop these subjects. Therefore, privileging the dialogue with the interpretative strand of medical anthropology (GOOD, 1994; 1977; KLEINMAN, 1978; 1980, 1988; YOUNG, 1982), that considers the compound health-disease-care as culturally built and understood, this work was set up as a qualitative approach research, which utilizing the individual narrative interview and active observation as data production techniques, attempted to understand the illness experiences of people diagnosed with fibromyalgia, linked to the University Hospital, in the city of Aracaju, Sergipe. Participated on this research, eight women from whom we tried to get closer, through their narratives, to their daily experiences, the meanings, and the practices of health care intersubjectively built on their processes of illness. The phenomenological aspects of these women’s experiences were constituted from a condition of physical limitations, affective commitments, symbolic violence, which directly impacts their personality, social relations and everyday practical activities, being experienced as a disruptive biographical event. Pain and fatigue placed themselves as fundamental symptoms of these illnesses, being responsible for the loss of work ability and restrictions in life that put them in a situation of greater dependence on the others. A relation which becomes conflictive, insofar as their symptoms are discredited by those with whom they live with and by the health professionals. The pain experience and other symptoms were marked under the sign of invisibility and of delegitimization, given the absence of something concrete to evidence the disease, which made difficult the construction of meanings that are shareable with the others. The suffering, placed in suspicion, produced in the discredited people a stigmatizing experience, generating the lowering of self-esteem, blame, production of depressive affections, which make interviewed women vulnerable to the aggravation of the illness. Under this latter aspect, this work revealed the understanding of gender inequalities as a factor or a context of vulnerability to the illness experiences. Because the gender mandates (PUJAL; MORA, 2014; MORA et al. 2017) for these women caused suffering, firstly against the compliance requirements of a role marked by injustice, and secondly by the lack of conditions of possibility for its realization. In this way, the present work was constituted as an effort to bring light to the experiences which until then were supposed to be of suffering, without, however, knowing under what contexts, circumstances and particularities they are modeled and nuanced.
Todos nós nos defrontamos com a experiência da dor em algum momento de nossas vidas, mais do que um “fato fisiológico” a dor é um “fato da existência”. Quando essa dor se torna ininterrupta, desestrutura nosso cotidiano, compromete nossas relações sociais, é endereçada e assim afeta os outros, ela deixa de ser uma experiência privada e torna-se pública. Na tentativa de solucionar esse problema, milhares de pessoas recorrem diariamente à ajuda médica e levam aos consultórios não somente suas queixas físicas, mas toda repercussão afetiva, social e subjetiva que um estado de adoecimento provoca, e que compõem seu estado de saúde. No Brasil, 2,5% dessas pessoas são diagnosticadas com uma patologia chamada fibromialgia. Do ponto de vista biomédico (disease), a fibromialgia é caracterizada como uma síndrome que envolve dor crônica em musculatura esquelética, que acomete diferentes regiões do corpo, estando associada à fadiga, distúrbios do sono, e sintomas psicopatológicos, como ansiedade e depressão. No entanto, os sintomas assim entendidos não produzem lesões verificáveis, nem algum substrato anatomopatológico que evidencie a doença, e dessa forma não apresentam parâmetros laboratoriais que orientem tanto o diagnóstico quantos as intervenções, obrigando os médicos a se reportarem aos parâmetros clínicos fornecidos pela narrativa dos pacientes. Deparando-se com a singularidade do sofrimento humano, e não mais com um padrão universal de funcionamento humano. Por conta dessa característica, o diagnóstico da fibromialgia tem sido considerado controverso, e seu tratamento de difícil manejo, visto que o modelo biomédico não dispõe de muitas ferramentas para lidar com a dimensão subjetiva e experiencial do adoecimento. No presente trabalho buscamos compreender a fibromialgia, ou melhor aquilo que é designado enquanto tal pelo saber biomédico (disease), na perspectiva dos sujeitos que são diagnosticados (illness). Buscando compreender quais são os sentidos construídos a partir da experiência de adoecimento, e quais práticas de cuidado à saúde desenvolvem esses sujeitos. Dessa maneira, privilegiandoo diálogo com a vertente interpretativa da antropologia médica (GOOD, 1994; 1977; KLEINMAN, 1978; 1980; 1988; YOUNG, 1982), que considera o complexo saúde-doença-cuidado como culturalmente construídos e interpretados, o presente trabalho configurou-se numa pesquisa de abordagem qualitativa, que utilizando a entrevista narrativa individual e observação participante como técnicas de produção de dados, buscou compreender as experiências de enfermidade de pessoas diagnosticadas com fibromialgia, vinculadas ao Hospital Universitário, na cidade de Aracaju, Sergipe. Participaram desta pesquisa oito mulheres, das quais procuramos nos aproximar, através de suas narrativas, de suas experiências cotidianas, dos significados e das práticas de cuidado à saúde intersubjetivamente construídas em seus processos de adoecimento. Os aspectos fenomenológicos das experiências dessas mulheres se constituíram por condições de limitações físicas, comprometimentos afetivos, violência simbólica que impactam diretamente sobre suas identidades, relações sociais e atividades práticas do dia-a-dia, sendo vividos como um evento biográfico disruptivo. As dores e fadiga, colocaram-se como sintomas fundamentais destes adoecimentos, sendo responsáveis pela perda da capacidade laborativa, restrições na vida que as colocaram numa posição de dependência maior em relação ao outro. Relação que passa a ser conflitiva, na medida em que seus sintomas são desacreditados por aqueles com quem convivem e pelos profissionais de saúde. A experiência de dor e outros sintomas foi marcada sob o signo da invisibilidade e da deslegitimação, visto a ausência de algo concreto que pudesse evidenciar a doença, o que dificultou a construção de significados compartilháveis com o outro. O sofrimento colocado em suspeição, produziu nas pessoas desacreditadas uma experiência estigmatizante, gerando o rebaixamento da autoestima, a culpabilização, a produção de afetos depressivos, que vulnerabilizam as mulheres entrevistadas ao agravamento do adoecimento. Sob este último aspecto, revelou-se neste trabalho, o entendimento das desigualdades de gênero, como fator ou contexto de vulnerabilidade para as experiências de adoecimento. Pois os mandatos de gênero (PUJAL; MORA, 2014; MORA et al. 2017) destinados à estas mulheres acarretaram sofrimento, primeiro diante das exigências de cumprimento de um papel marcado pela injustiça e segundo pela falta de condições de possibilidade para sua realização. Dessa forma o presente trabalho constituiu-se num esforço de trazer luz às vivências que até então supunham-se sofridas, sem que no entanto soubéssemos sob quais contextos, circunstâncias e particularidades elas são modeladas e matizadas.
São Cristóvão, SE
18
Davis, Andrew. "Symptoms of Self-Image: Medical Diagnosis in Contemporary Narrative." Thesis, Boston College, 2018. http://hdl.handle.net/2345/bc-ir:108086.
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Thesis advisor: Laura TannerIllness touches all of us, both directly and indirectly, and to respond to a reality with physical and psychological ramifications, we turn to diagnosis for answers. The role of diagnosis is to place a name upon a bodily disorder, giving a patient some idea of what has gone wrong in his or her body, and how life may change. At its essence, diagnosis renders a mysterious set of symptoms into a tangible, understandable disease that can, ideally, be recognized and treated. Yet this perspective can seem strangely simplistic. How can a single word or phrase encapsulate the variable and far-reaching effects of illness on the complicated lives we live? And what are the effects of the application of the phrase to a patient’s life: a comforting awareness, an estrangement from healthy society, or something in between?
Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2018
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Departmental Honors
Discipline: English
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Arnfield, Susan M. "Living with chronic illness. A biographical analysis of a family's account." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/5480.
Full textAbstract:
It has been estimated that by the year 2014 there will be a 12 per cent
increase in the number of adults with at least one chronic illness condition
(Carrier, 2009). The turn to caring for those with a chronic illness at home
has resulted in carers having an increased risk of developing health
problems (Ohman & Soderberg, 2004). As such there is a need to
understand how families manage and cope with illness at home. This study
has examined the effect chronic illness had on not only the woman with
illness, but also the immediate family closely involved with her care.
Additionally the study has sought to address the effect chronic illness had on
the ¿self¿ and ¿identity¿ of these three women and to determine what extent
and impact the illness process had on the relationships within this family. The
study used open-ended biographic narrative interviews to elicit data. The
research revealed that each woman experienced change and loss to both
¿self¿ and ¿identity¿ albeit in different ways. Interestingly and of significance is
the way these women in their narrative accounts revisited their past lives in
implicating and accounting for the present and the future (Freeman 2010). It
was discovered that the past history and past relationships of these women
affected how they each responded to illness and each other in their present
circumstances.
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Paradiso, Krista Michelle. "Manic-Depression in America: Gendered and Narrative Constructions of Mental Health and Illness." The Ohio State University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1392980305.
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Arnfield, Susan Mary. "Living with chronic illness : a biographical analysis of a family's account." Thesis, University of Bradford, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10454/5480.
Full textAbstract:
It has been estimated that by the year 2014 there will be a 12 per cent increase in the number of adults with at least one chronic illness condition (Carrier, 2009). The turn to caring for those with a chronic illness at home has resulted in carers having an increased risk of developing health problems (Ohman & Soderberg, 2004). As such there is a need to understand how families manage and cope with illness at home. This study has examined the effect chronic illness had on not only the woman with illness, but also the immediate family closely involved with her care. Additionally the study has sought to address the effect chronic illness had on the 'self' and 'identity' of these three women and to determine what extent and impact the illness process had on the relationships within this family. The study used open-ended biographic narrative interviews to elicit data. The research revealed that each woman experienced change and loss to both 'self' and 'identity' albeit in different ways. Interestingly and of significance is the way these women in their narrative accounts revisited their past lives in implicating and accounting for the present and the future (Freeman 2010). It was discovered that the past history and past relationships of these women affected how they each responded to illness and each other in their present circumstances.
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Lindley, Emma Rosamund. "Making sense of mental illness : the importance of inclusive dialogue." Thesis, University of Manchester, 2011. https://www.research.manchester.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/making-sense-of-mental-illness-the-importance-of-inclusive-dialogue(8e45868b-7787-450f-bf84-83d6410de733).html.
Full textAbstract:
People with diagnoses of mental illness have been described as the last minority group against whom it is socially acceptable to discriminate. Challenging the stigma of mental illness is a major social issue and public health concern. Despite a range of anti-stigma efforts being conducted in recent years, the problem persists. It has been argued that a good place to start when changing social attitudes is with young people, whose attitudes are in a state of flux, making them more open to alternative ways of thinking. However, school based educational approaches designed to address this issue are in their infancy. To date, the mental health stigma reduction agenda has largely been drawn up by those who hold most power in the field – predominantly psychiatrists. This has led to anti-stigma initiatives drawing primarily on a biomedical model. There is a growing body of evidence that this approach is not only ineffective, but can actually increase stigma. There is therefore a need to investigate and test alternative approaches. Furthermore, previous research investigating young people’s knowledge of and attitudes about mental illness has been constrained by being conducted within the terms of the dominant discourse.This research set out to investigate how young people construct their positions in relation to mental illness. A primary aim was to understand how they negotiate the ambiguities of the mental health discourse. In addition, it has looked at the impact of engaging in ‘inclusive dialogue’ about mental illness on young people’s sense making. Mental illness is itself an essentially contested concept. Inclusive dialogue is an approach which takes seriously the variety of competing concerns which make up the ways in which mental illness is approached in day to day life, aiming to embrace the complexities and encourage people to grapple with them, bringing their own experiences and beliefs to bear. The underlying purpose of the inquiry was to consider whether there is potential for educational initiatives to help young people adopt non-discriminatory stances in relation to mental illness. The research was conducted qualitatively, and engaged a group of seven year 10 pupils in a series of discussions, which took place over the course of a half term. In addition, individual interviews and follow up group sessions were carried out later in the academic year.The results of this study indicate that engaging young people in inclusive dialogue is beneficial across a range of domains. The young people said that the discussions left them more comfortable in talking about mental illness and confident about their ability to respond to mental illness in people around them. The study revealed that context and the specific details of each situation are crucial in determining whether young people take up stigmatising or supportive positions towards people with a mental illness. Stepping outside the terms of the dominant discourse reveals that far from being the product of poor comprehension of biomedical psychiatry, ‘stigma’ may in fact be just one of a set of responses to people with mental illness. People who are mentally ill sometimes behave in ways that are disturbing and frightening, and it is vital that education accepts, rather than sidesteps, this reality. The findings of this investigation suggest that what is needed to improve social responses to mental illness is a reframing of the issues; a conceptual shift, wherein the notions of ‘knowledge’ and ‘attitude’ are not taken for granted and the aim of ‘reducing stigma’ is left behind in favour of the positively framed target of increasing solidarity.
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Donnelly, Taylor, and Taylor Donnelly. "Vogue Diagnoses: Functions of Madness in Twentieth-Century American Literature." Thesis, University of Oregon, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1794/12366.
Full textAbstract:
Fiction and drama have engaged with madness across the epistemes of the American twentieth century. Given the prominence of the subject of madness, both historically and literarily, we need a unified methodology for analysis and action. As a subfield of disability studies, "mad studies" deals specifically with representations of mental distress rather than physical otherness, examining how "madness" enables writers to convey certain meanings or produce certain stories. In minor characters, these meanings are infused into characters' actantial function within the symbolic model of disability: madness works as a device for plot, psychological depth (of other characters), and thematic resonance. Onstage, these meanings transform as they inhabit the social/political/cultural model of disability rather than the medical or symbolic models. Realistic, expressionistic, and musical theatre across the twentieth century have all found ways to stage not only "madness," but also the social responses and contexts that construct it, while simultaneously giving audiences formal opportunities to sympathize with the so-called mad characters. Mad protagonists follow particular plot patterns prompted by the temporal, existential, or hermeneutic mystery posed by madness. Male madness narratives often engage with the legitimizing etiology of war, freeing them from the temporal mystery - "what caused this to happen?" - and allowing them to address the existential mystery - "what is this like?" - through formal experimentation. Female madness narratives, grappling with a medical discourse that emphasizes endogenous causality for women, retort to such discourse by emphasizing a broader temporal plot. Offering more possible answers to "what caused this to happen" than doctors do, female madness narratives show that subjective experience exists within a social, as well as a biological, framework. Yet, popular as fictions remain, in recent years, the genre of memoir has eclipsed them. Madness memoir engages in a real-world context with the central linguistic challenge of madness. Memoirists' use of metaphor to convey recalcitrant experiences of distress not only engages with existential and hermeneutic mystery (what is it like, and what does it mean), but suggests a way forward for intersubjective understanding that sympathizes without co-opting, allowing for meaningful communication and political action across differences.
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Davis, Kayla. "On Experiencing Illness in the Western Biomedical World: A Push for more Comprehensive Healthcare in America." Digital Commons @ East Tennessee State University, 2018. https://dc.etsu.edu/honors/460.
Full textAbstract:
The purpose of this thesis is to identify common themes presented in several illness narratives with specific attention paid to the relationship between patients and their physicians and patients and their families. Only illness narratives written in America and Western Europe were used for this thesis so the topic could be narrowed to the experience within the western biomedical field. While most research on illness narratives focuses on defining illness and illustrating the importance of introspective work, this thesis identifies patterns in a way that can shape the future treatment of chronically ill patients. This thesis also allows me to creatively explore a personal illness narrative, reinforcing these themes and contributing to the discussion of what physicians and families can do to make the illness experience more bearable for the patient.
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Venter, Mariska. "Cancer patients' illness experiences during a group intervention / Mariska Venter." Thesis, North-West University, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10394/4154.
Full textAbstract:
The high incidence of cancer and the accompanying medical and psychological effects thereof make
exploring cancer patients' experiences regarding their illness potentially valuable. The aim of this
study was to qualitatively explore cancer patients' illness experiences during a listening group
intervention. Secondary analysis was done on data previously collected by Strydom (2006), for his
study on "Cancer patients' and non-cancer patients' experiences of the listening group technique." The use of this post-modernist approach, in which the individual is seen as the expert in his/her own life, makes the data gathered by Strydom (2006) eminently suitable for gaining a true understanding of cancer patients' illness experiences. Analysis of the data yielded twelve prevalent themes namely,
support, perspectives and experiences in medical context, perspectives on life and death, emotional
experiences, religion, role of knowledge and information pertaining to cancer, finances, concern for
others, loss, desire for survival, humour, and physical symptoms. In an attempt to make sense of these themes a framework suggesting moderating factors that would influence cancer patients' illness experiences and outcomes, is proposed. Due to the rising number of cancer survivors and the fact that finishing the treatment seldom indicates the end of the cancer experience, it is suggested that further research regarding the development of a survivorship care programme within the South African context be undertaken.Thesis (M.A. (Psychology))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2009.
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Pederson, Sarah Nicole. "The final chapter: end-of-life identity constructions in hospice narrative performances." Diss., University of Iowa, 2012. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/3511.
Full textAbstract:
Through a post-colonial narrative turn, scholars created space for alternative illness narratives to be performed; narratives that reflected the fragmented and unpredictable ways of ailing bodies, and allowed for multiple and diverse identities to be constructed. However, even with this post-colonial turn, illness narratives in U.S. culture often depict situations in which individuals overcome their illnesses, and death is somehow avoided (Langellier & Peterson, 2004), which present potential constraints for what narratives individuals at the end-of-life (EOL) are able to tell and what identities they are able to construct. Using post-colonial narrative theory (Frank, 1995) as a framework, I engaged in a thematic narrative analysis of 16 hospice patient narratives, to understand whether narratives and identity constructions are constrained for dying individuals as they attempt to make sense of the end-of-life.
Patients constructed the five identities of the experienced individual, the believer, the ailing individual, the good dier, and the individual who is still living, through several themes. Ideals of both post-colonialism and modernism were present in identity constructions, suggesting some acceptance of alternative narratives for individuals at the EOL. However, notably a new type of colonization emerged as patients' identity constructions and themes reflected elements of ars moriendi or the good death (Faust, 2008). Specifically, it appears that end-of-life narratives must reflect that the individual nearing the end-of-life is doing so in a culturally acceptable way which involves acceptance, sacrificial or selfless qualities, dying gladly, and dying not alone. This nuanced type of colonization suggests that specific illness situations might present unique narrative colonization.
I end by offering practical implications for health care providers and family. Specifically, these findings might inform traditional practitioners and encourage them to broaden the clinical definition of the good death, with an understanding that elements such as esteem and emotional support or empowerment might be paramount for some patients' good deaths. Additionally, these findings offer awareness to family members regarding cultural expectations of the good death, so that they might consider whether they are adding pressure to their loved ones to achieve such a death.
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Foster, Kim Narelle. "A Narrative Inquiry into the Experiences of Adult Children of Parents with Serious Mental Illness." Thesis, Griffith University, 2006. http://hdl.handle.net/10072/368081.
Full textAbstract:
Children of parents with mental illness (COPMI) are a substantial, yet until quite recently, marginalised group within society. Whilst extensive empirical research has been conducted into their risk for adverse psychosocial outcomes as well as potential for resilience, there has been relatively little focus on their personal experiences and understandings of such experiences. In recent years, national and international mental health service policies and guidelines for service provision have been developed to address the specific needs of families and children where parents have mental illness, including serious mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. These policies and related service provision guidelines have appropriately focused health professionals' attention on the needs and importance of prevention and early intervention for COPMI. There has not, however, been an associated focus on the needs and experiences of adult children of parents with mental illness (ACOPMI), who have remained significantly marginalised in respect to policy and mental health service provision whilst also demonstrating an increased risk for psychosocial adversity yet potential for resilience. Thus, there has been a gap in knowledge of the experiences of adult children with parents who have mental illness, and their needs have not been served adequately. This narrative inquiry set out to extend the limited understandings of the needs and experiences of adult children of parents with serious mental illnesses (ACOPSMI) such as schizophrenia and major depression. These illnesses have been recognised through research as having potential for long-term and often adverse impacts on children. A lengthy unstructured narrative interview and member check process was conducted with nine ACOPSMI in Australia over a nine month period. The inclusion of the researcher's experience through the use of auto-ethnography resulted in a total of ten participants in the study. Postmodern assumptions have provided a framework for this inquiry and so in this thesis multiplicity, diversity and attending to the voices of those on the margins have been privileged. In order to identify the concerns of ACOPSMI using methods that allowed their voices and stories to be heard from multiple perspectives, a dual analytic process was developed. As per Lather's (1997) recommendation of doing a 'double science', a conventional or realist interpretation of participants' experiences was initially performed. Field texts were analysed according to van Manen's (1990) interpretive phenomenological thematic approach. This initial analytic phase sought to develop and build upon the existing literature which had used similar approaches. In order to thicken interpretations and add a fresh dimension to conventional understandings, the postmodern or alternate story of their experiences was then illuminated through a postmodern narrative analysis. This approach employed an analytic framework developed from the work of several other postmodern and/or narrative writers.
From the initial analysis, four phenomenological themes of participants' experiences were uncovered. Consistent with previous literature, these adult children experienced a number of difficulties in growing up with parents with serious mental illness, including assuming responsibility for their parent and family, experiencing negative emotional impacts and developing their own mental health problems, and finding it challenging to connect emotionally with their parents and others. They also, however, demonstrated considerable resilience and effective ways of coping with their experience which assisted many of them to forge productive lives and overcome negative impacts of their past. This thesis discusses these participants' experiences from both conventional and alternate perspectives, as well as addressing the inter-textuality of meanings that may be found between the spaces of such findings. In the light of participants' experiences, recommendations have been developed for health professionals' practice which seek to inform and guide them in working with adult children and families where parents have serious mental illness.Thesis (PhD Doctorate)
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
School of Nursing and Midwifery
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Goldsmith, Rachel Edrea Stern. "Making meaning outside of the system a narrative exploration of recovery within a peer-run setting /." Oxford, Ohio : Miami University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=miami1272243278.
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Thelen, Andrea Zolnier. "Narrative efforts at social redemption by people with AIDS/HIV." [Tampa, Fla] : University of South Florida, 2007. http://purl.fcla.edu/usf/dc/et/SFE0001863.
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Fraser, Gillian W. "Validating the Narrative Recovery Style Scale (NRSS) in a sample of individuals with serious mental illness." Thesis, University of Glasgow, 2018. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/30997/.
Full textAbstract:
Background: A critique of the traditional two-factor model of recovery style suggests that it does not fully take into account the range of strategies people use in their recovery. A third style of ‘ruminative preoccupation’ is proposed in addition to the existing styles of ‘integration’ and ‘sealing over’. In addition, current tools used to measure recovery style lack construct validity and have limitations such as being outdated or using a simplistic format. The Narrative Recovery Style Scale (NRSS) is a novel method of evaluating recovery style, using interview transcripts to provide a three-dimensional measurement of an individual’s style. Aim: The primary aim of this study was to validate and examine the psychometric properties of the NRSS in a mixed clinical sample of individuals with serious mental illness. Method: 36 participants with either schizophrenia (n=13), bipolar disorder (n=9), or complex trauma (n=14) were recruited to the study from community mental health services in Glasgow. Participants were interviewed using the Narrative Interview for Compassion-Revised (NCS-R), a recorded semi-structured interview designed to measure participants’ experiences of compassion towards the self, from self to others and from others to self. This was transcribed and the NRSS was applied to the narrative in order to obtain recovery style ratings. We examined the relationship between the NRSS and the Recovery Style Questionnaire (RSQ), the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) and the Psychosis Attachment Measure (PAM). Results: No associations were found between the NRSS subscales and the RSQ, the CISS, or the PAM. Regarding the internal structure of the scale, the integration subscale was found to be negatively correlated with the sealing over subscale. No relationship was found between the other subscales. Regarding the characteristics of the sample, a number of significant differences between the diagnostic groups were noted including age, IQ, occupation, attachment avoidance, coping, and RSQ recovery style. Conclusions: Although the results do not support the validity of the NRSS as a three-dimensional measure of recovery style, there are various methodological factors which may have influenced the study results. We recommend the development of a specifically constructed interview designed to activate recovery style, upon which the NRSS can be more reliably applied. A re-examination of the NRSS scoring strategy may also increase the research utility and strengthen the reliability of the measure.
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Adlington, Rebecca Louise. "Narratives of young people living with cystic fibrosis (CF)." Thesis, University of Hertfordshire, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/2299/9121.
Full textAbstract:
Background and aims: Cystic Fibrosis (CF) is the most common genetic, life threatening disorder in the UK (Cystic Fibrosis Trust, 2010). Given the trajectory of the illness, adolescence may be a particularly challenging period, during which young people become more aware of differences from peers, and are faced with the task of balancing increasing illness demands with the drive to aspire to developmental goals. Nevertheless, little research specifically explores how young people with CF reconcile their illness experiences with the emerging sense of self. In an attempt to address this gap in the literature, this study sought to hear the narratives of young people with CF with reference to the local and broader contextual factors influencing their construction, with the aim to further understanding, inform clinical practice and improve support for young people with CF. Methodology: A qualitative approach was employed. A purposive sample of six participants diagnosed with CF and aged between 12 and 16 years was recruited. Participants were asked to take photographs of their experiences of life as a young person with CF which were used alongside a semi-structured topic guide in individual interviews to explore the young person’s narratives. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analysed using a narrative approach to explore both what was said and how it was told.Analysis and Findings: The researcher’s global impressions of each person’s narratives, along with details of the local context of the interview were presented. Following this, similarities and differences across the narratives were considered with particular attention to how the main storylines were interwoven with participants’ emotional experiences, the identity work taking place through the narrative, and the broader narratives available to them. It emerged that (i) CF was perceived as part of participants’ normality which they had grown accustomed to over time, (ii) participants drew on cultural narratives to position themselves as normal teenagers, to maintain a positive sense of self, though also leading them to minimise difficulties and distress, and (iii) participants continued to position themselves within the norm as they talked of their futures, describing similar hopes to their peers, and again played down concerns about how CF might impact on their futures. These findings are discussed with reference to the clinical implications, strengths, and limitations of the methodology, and directions for future research.
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Assad, Mary K. "Gender, Illness, and Narrative: A Rhetorical Study of the American Heart Association's Go Red For Women Campaign." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 2014. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1401996060.
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Schuetze, Sarah. "More Than Death: Fear of Illness in American Literature 1775-1876." UKnowledge, 2015. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/english_etds/18.
Full textAbstract:
This dissertation argues that eighteenth- and nineteenth-century narratives about personal and collective experiences with disease train American readers to fear illness while warning them against the dangers of being afraid. Such narratives depict the way illness ravages the physical body, disrupts interpersonal relationships, and threatens to dismantle social or municipal organization. In other words, the story of sickness is a story of terror-inducing dis-order. I study disease with a lens informed by cultural and disability studies to show that what makes disease historically and culturally significant is its power—through the body—to dis-order relationships, society, and knowledge. Anxieties about this dis-order did not go dormant when an epidemic faded; they continued to circulate in writing, their vigor magnifying with each new outbreak.
Through extensive archival research into representations of disease in ephemera, popular publications, and medical writing, my dissertation proffers a new reading of canonical works depicting sickness. Literary works gothicize disease by dramatizing its possible effects that make life unrecognizable, thus feeding fears as they portray them. My analysis shows that works like John and Abigail Adams’s letters, Abigail Abbot Bailey’s memoir, editorials from Nathaniel Parker Willis, novels like Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Harriet Wilson’s Our Nig are as invested in the fear of illness as disease narratives by Charles Brockden Brown and Edgar Allan Poe that are traditionally read as gothic. While scholars may recognize the significance of disease-induced fear in any of these individual texts, they treat each example as unique whereas I show literary authors contribute to a broader cultural anxiety spawned on the pages of popular media and spread through belles-lettres.
To emphasize the relationship between the circulation of information and the circulation of disease, each chapter focuses on one disease and the written or print form that participated in sharing and shaping opinions about the disease as a terrifying event: smallpox and letters, yellow fever and pamphlets, cholera and periodicals, and tuberculosis and sentimental novels.
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Claeson, Lisbeth. "Tid och existentiellt meningsskapande : Kvinnors berättelser om sitt liv med allvarlig sjukdom." Doctoral thesis, Stockholms universitet, Pedagogiska institutionen, 2010. http://urn.kb.se/resolve?urn=urn:nbn:se:su:diva-42328.
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Being affected by a serious or life-threatening illness implies an existentially changed situation that is accompanied by a number of questions about the illness itself, consequences of the illness in an everyday context and implications for the future. The purpose of this dissertation is to examine people’s meaning-making when they are affected by a serious illness and to determine how the illness acquires meaning in the context of their lives. The dissertation thus deals with what can be referred to as existential meaning-making. A hermeneutical approach was adopted, drawing more specifically on Paul Ricoeur’s narrative theory that emphasises the importance of different dimensions of time and memory in the understanding of narratives. An empirical study was carried out of illness narratives collected in research interviews with six women who had been diagnosed with serious illnesses, such as cancer, stroke and heart attack. The analysis reveals that the discovery of the illness and the period following was characterized by chaos and a lack of time perspective, feelings of lack of freedom and thoughts about death, but also feelings of responsibility towards the family. Experiences of the health services were also important in accounts of this early period, particularly wishes for more empathic encounters with the professionals. In the women’s accounts of the long term living with the illness, death continues to emerge as a back drop to their everyday experiences of the illness, but gradually more as confronting the problem of death rather than giving up life. Over time, relationships to significant others and the importance of everyday life also constitute increasingly important themes. In their expectations for the future, the women account for some experiences that have been important in creating a sense of hope and heightened vitality, and thus a new ‘wholeness’, such as being close to nature as well as their religious or spiritual experiences. These results are discussed in terms of how memories of significant events or places play an important role in existential meaning-making, and also how reflections on these memories can be seen as a process of existential ‘learning’.
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Horackova, Clare Frances. "Traumatic histories : representations of (post-)Communist Czechoslovakia in Sylvie Germain, Daniela Hodrová, and Jean-Gaspard Páleníček." Thesis, University of Exeter, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10871/17945.
Full textAbstract:
Through a study of the work of three important writers, this thesis engages with the traumatic memories of the second half of the twentieth century in Czechoslovakia in order to highlight the value of literature in widening critical understandings of the continuing legacy of this complex era, which was dominated by totalitarian regimes under the Communist governments which gained control after the upheaval of the Second World War. Whilst these years were not unilaterally traumatic, many lives were dramatically affected by border closures and by the experience of living under a regime that maintained control through methods including confiscation of property, surveillance, arbitrary imprisonment, show trials, and executions. Many of the stories of this era could not be published openly because of censorship, and the persecution of intellectuals led to a wave of emigration, during which a number of writers moved to France. Using theories of trauma, exile, illness, and of self and other, this thesis opens up a dialogue between the work of three writers who engage, albeit from very different perspectives, with this little-explored intersection between Czech and French. The first chapter explores Daniela Hodrová's translated Prague trilogy as a first-hand witness to her nation's dispossession and as a form of resistance to the deletion of memory. The second chapter considers the painful transgenerational legacy of the era as it plays out in the work of bilingual writer Jean-Gaspard Páleníček. Chapter Three considers the ways in which the Prague novels of established French author Sylvie Germain negotiate the fine line between an appropriation of the stories of the other and a moral responsibility to bear witness. By bringing these authors together for the first time and locating their work within French Studies, my work foregrounds the need for Western criticism to pay attention to other valuable voices who can contribute to our understandings of the traumatic experience that has shaped modern history.
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Mueri, Christine Andrea. "'Defined not by time, but by mood': First-person narratives of bipolar disorder." Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1307662397.
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Klein, Ellen W. "Shamanism, Spiritual Transformation and the Ethical Obligations of the Dying Person: A Narrative Approach." Scholar Commons, 2010. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/3538.
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The person experiencing chronic or protracted illness is confronted with a complex array of physical, emotional and spiritual trials. This thesis explores how chronic illness can be viewed through the lens of the shamanic experience of dismemberment and re-memberment and shows how clinical, narrative, and relational models on their own are insufficient to speak meaningfully to illness experiences, but the integration of aspects of each of these models when coupled with shamanic initiation experience creates an innovative model for patients and those with whom they are in relationship.
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Lee, Jessica Nalani Oi Jun. "Too Much Information: Agency and Disruptions of Power in Personal Narratives of Mental Illness and Suffering." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/323465.
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Healing in the mental health system of the 21st century is difficult as the credibility of mental health users is constantly called into question, their experiences and perceptions of their "illness" undervalued or even completely ignored. This attitude towards mental health users must be changed in order to work towards truly alleviating mental illness and suffering. Careful analysis of the rhetoric of published personal narratives written by women describing their experiences with mental healthcare reveals the ways in which medical knowledge is created, owned, and disseminated only by the “authoritative expert,” defined as healthcare professionals who categorize, taxonomize, and pathologize in order to treat both physical and mental illness. I argue the authoritative expert marginalizes the "everyday expert," exemplified through the perceptions of women who, in their narratives, record realities that do not always match the diagnoses and prognoses assigned to them by their healthcare providers. My project's central question asks: In what ways do personal narratives of mental illness and suffering illuminate the ways in which language constructs reality? My research illuminates the ways in which narratives of mental illness and suffering are healing, and thus serves as an advocate for patient rights, both by empowering patients and by furthering discussion among medical professionals regarding problematizing "standard" treatment. My work advances the connection between politics and language as it takes a commonly undervalued form of language and lived experience--narrative--and researches the ways in which it has been and can continue to be used as a powerful political agent to empower mental health users by giving them a voice. Specifically, I demonstrate how patients' personal experiences should and can be valued as a way to illuminate their own understanding of their disease as well as to inform their treatment. This project lays the foundation for future research examining ways treatment for mental illness should be differentiated from treatment for physical illness. I am interested in ways to further combat the stigma of mental illness by looking at ways providers can honor and respect the opinions and values of mental health patients in non-pejorative ways.
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de, Cavalho Raiana. "Agency, participation, and cancer stories on Instagram: A narrative analysis of the Networked Oncological Causers in Brazil." Kent State University / OhioLINK, 2019. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=kent1574249134299928.
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Coats, Heather, Janice D. Crist, Ann Berger, Esther Sternberg, and Anne G. Rosenfeld. "African American Elders’ Serious Illness Experiences: Narratives of "God Did," "God Will," and "Life Is Better"." SAGE PUBLICATIONS INC, 2017. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/623518.
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The foundation of culturally sensitive patient-centered palliative care is formed from one's social, spiritual, psychological, and physical experiences of serious illness. The purpose of this study was to describe categories and patterns of psychological, social, and spiritual healing from the perspectives of aging seriously ill African American (AA) elders. Using narrative analysis methodology, 13 open-ended interviews were collected. Three main patterns were prior experiences, I changed, and across past, present experiences and future expectations. Themes were categorized within each pattern: been through it . . . made me strong, I thought about . . . others, went down little hills . . . got me down, I grew stronger, changed priorities, do things I never would have done, quit doing, God did and will take care of me, close-knit relationships, and life is better. Faith in God helped the aging seriously ill AA elders overcome things, whether their current illness or other life difficulties.
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Martin, Vivienne. "A narrative inquiry into the effects of serious illness and major surgery on conceptions of self and life story." Thesis, University of Bristol, 2008. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.495891.
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Blackstone, Kerri Lynn. "Stigma and Identity Formation in Young Adults with Chronic Mental Illness: An Exploration through Personal Narrative and Art-Making." Digital Commons at Loyola Marymount University and Loyola Law School, 2013. https://digitalcommons.lmu.edu/etd/32.
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This research explores the experience of stigma and its effect on identity formation in young adults who suffer from chronic mental illness. Data was gathered in the form of personal narratives and art-making through a a semi-structured, qualitative focus group. It was categorized and coded in order to better understand the experience of both public and internalized stigma in relation to the developmental milestones that characterize the important transition from adolescence to adulthood. Analysis of the data resulted in the emergence of three overarching themes: 1) The challenges of coping with a stigmatizing system, 2) Internalized stigma as it relates to the formation of adult identity, and 3) The use of art to combat stigma and facilitate self-discovery. These themes were examined against existing literature pertaining to the stigma of mental illness, identity formation in young adults, and the use of art to combat stigma and promote healthy identity. The findings of this research emphasize the insidious nature of stigma and ofer support for the ability of art-based programs to empower young adults who face the challenges of mental illness.
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Kauffman, Jill Lauren. "Poetry "Found" in Illness Narrative: A Feminist Approach to Patients' Ways of Knowing and the Concept of Relational Autonomy." Thesis, Connect to resource online, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/1963.
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Thesis (M.A.)--Indiana University, 2009.Department of Philosophy, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Advisor(s): Peg Brand, James Capshew, Richard Gunderman, Jane E. Schultz. Includes vitae. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 117-122).
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Hood, Rebekah Michele. "Invisible Voices: Revising Feminist Approaches to Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Including the Narrative of Mental Illness." BYU ScholarsArchive, 2017. https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/6678.
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Since 1973, the year in which Elaine Hedges's groundbreaking edition of "The Yellow Wallpaper" was published, Charlotte Perkins Gilman's short story has been read primarily as one of America's leading feminist texts. With potent symbolism and a fragmented style of narration, it is easy to understand why many feminist scholars fashion the story's narrator into a proactive feminist, a courageous heroine who rebels against patriarchal oppression. While this trend of interpretation compellingly attempts to empower the narrator, it often overlooks her perspective of disability and projects the characteristics of a nondisabled, high-functioning feminist on a mentally ill woman. This paper reads Gilman's short story as a narrative of mental illness and applies the research of feminist disability scholars Anita Silvers, Jenny Morris, and Susan Wendell to a close reading of the story. Approaching the story from this perspective, we can identify the systems of oppression that disable the narrator and read "The Yellow Wallpaper" in a way that validates the subjective reality of depression and invites disabled voices into feminism's exploration of womanhood.
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Scheffels, Erin L. "Everything is Fine: Self-Portrait of a Caregiver with Chronic Depression and Other Preexisting Conditions." Scholar Commons, 2018. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/7709.
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This dissertation documents the joys and terrors of caring for my father throughout my twenties and early thirties. The story is autoethnographic and demonstrates the value of narrative research in fostering understandings of self, other, and the world around us. I call this reflexive practice of writing narrative education because as I engaged in it, I learned what it means to care, and how mental health and illness factor into the ways in which care is expressed and provided in my own relationships and beyond. In addition, throughout the story I was a member of the academic community, which makes caring more than an act or behavior, but a concept to unpack, an ideograph. This dissertation begins with the goal to write my story and learn from it so others might learn from it as well. While the narrative portion of my dissertation focuses on story and the craft of creative nonfiction, the final chapters present a discussion of narrative ethics and the writing process. I also delve into concepts of care, family, and community to shed light on the narrative and create a space for reflection.
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Varga, Stefanie. "Ruling out the 'bad things' : how physicians make meaning of persistent unexplained illness in children." Thesis, University of Plymouth, 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10026.1/2736.
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This was a study of physicians' narratives regarding their medical experiences with children with persistent medically unexplained physical illness. The goal was to better understand those attitudes and beliefs that are involved in the construction of meaning regarding the child's symptoms of illness or pain. The study also sought to learn more about physicians' early life experiences with health and illness and their potential to shape diagnostic thinking and treatment. Ten physician participants were interviewed using an open-ended, semistructured interview methodology. Interviews were analyzed using an alternative narrative approach described by Mishler (1986, 1991) to identify key themes within and across interviews for comparative analysis. The subjective experience and dynamic discourse between interviewer and participant were also analyzed (Mishler, 1991; Paget, 1983). Four key themes emerged: (1) the experience of certainty and uncertainty; (2) physician search for restitution; (3) the path to truth and the construction of the physician's illness narrative; and (4) the parallel anxiety between physician and parent. Findings suggested a "stages of training" model or developmental career theme associated with the ways in which physicians make meaning of persistent medically unexplained illness or pain in the child. Implications for diagnosis and treatment include the possibility that the nature of the relationship between physicians and parents-- particularly the ability to negotiate trust, intimacy, and power--may lead to a hidden and collaborative meaning making of symptoms that occurs in exclusion, of the child, Certain early life experiences of the physician may also be brought to bear in the medical encounter with parent and child. Physicians would benefit from training in neutrality and negotiation of therapeutic goals with parents of sick children, as well as training to enhance self-awareness and understanding of the ways in which alliances and conflicts with patients and parents may occur as a result of family of origin issues.
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Adame, Alexandra Lynne. "Recovered voices, recovered lives a narrative analysis of psychiatric survivors' experiences of recovery /." Oxford, Ohio : Miami University, 2006. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=miami1152813614.
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Burrelsman, Katherine Marie. "A Search for Meaning: The Family’s Response to Serious Mental Illness." Antioch University / OhioLINK, 2009. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=antioch1273765830.
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Goldsmith, Rachel E. "Making Meaning Outside of the System: A Narrative Exploration of Recovery Within a Peer-run Setting." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1272243278.
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Pfaff, Aleisha. "Coping with the personal loss of having a parent with mental illness young adults' narrative accounts of spiritual struggle and strength /." Bowling Green, Ohio : Bowling Green State University, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc%5Fnum=bgsu1212702768.
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