Family health narratives: midlife women's concepts of vulnerability to illness (original) (raw)
Related papers
Sociology of Health & Illness, 2007
Some people living with HIV spontaneously control the virus without antiretroviral treatment. They are called HIV controllers, and their status places them at the limits of bio-clinical normality. The objective of this study was to investigate HIV controllers' beliefs and representations of their individual trajectories using a qualitative approach. Fourteen HIV controllers were interviewed. Vertical analysis focused on examining how interviewees' specific beliefs and representational processes help these patients adapt to their particular situation. Horizontal analysis focused on how patients' biographic trajectories and identity positioning help them make sense of their situation. Results highlighted that perceiving oneself to be healthy or ill was linked to change or a lack of change in terms of disease perception, beliefs, and representations, when seropositivity was announced. This study of social representations and the processes involved provide crucial elements for health professionals caring for HIV controllers.
Age and Gender in Women's Accounts of Their Health: Interviews with Women in South Wales
Sociology of Health and Illness, 1998
In-depth interviews with 35 women in a working-class community in South Wales suggest that there are generational differences both in the ways women talk about health and in their health experiences. These are linked with women's differing social circumstances; changes over time in the ways in which health and ill health are explained; and the physical changes which are an unavoidable part of embodiment.
Autobiography as genre for qualitative data: A reservoir of experience for nursing research
Collegian, 2012
This paper is concerned with the use of published literary autobiographies that contain first-hand accounts of illness narratives, to explore their usefulness as a form of qualitative data to generate knowledge that can inform nursing practice. There is increasing realisation that the experiences of patients and families should be used to guide health care service delivery, and autobiographical accounts are a valuable resource, providing first-hand accounts of the ways illness, disability, and health care, are experienced by patients and their families.
Illness Narratives as Theory and Method Other Entries SAGE Research Methods Foundations
SAGE Research Methods Foundations, 2019
Illness narratives are stories whereby those afflicted articulate experiences of disease and illness. They are ways of subjectively and intersubjectively making sense of illness by linguistic means. Especially in the case of chronic diseases, illness plays a central role of people’s lives and everyday experience and practices, while the initial diagnosis is often experienced as a moment of major biographical disruption. Such diagnoses call into question past experiences, current life circumstances, and the possibility to extend established routines into the future. They may even call into question the possibility to devise future plans and biographical projects at all. Against this backdrop, illness narratives can be viewed as efforts to construct illness as a meaningful event and to bring different moments into a temporal and meaningful order with some level of coherence
Developing person centred care through the use of autobiography
International Practice Development Journal
Aim: This paper aims to demonstrate how to understand a woman’s lived experience of postnatal psychosis by examining an autobiographical account of the condition, found in The Book of Margery Kempe. Research design: A qualitative research design based on a textual analysis approach was used. Methods: The text was read against the domains of the common-sense model of illness (identity, cause, consequence, control-treatment, control-personal, coherence and emotional representation). Specific extracts were categorised into each domain and read closely to determine how a patient’s account of their illness can be interpreted usefully for healthcare plans. Results: The autobiographical account of postnatal psychosis gives fresh insights into how patients reconstruct the condition from memory and what meaning they may attribute to the cause, progression, treatment and outcome of the illness. Conclusions and implications for practice: • Autobiographical accounts of a patient’s lived experience of illness can be powerful educational tools that healthcare professionals can use to develop a person-centred approach to treatment • Autobiography demonstrates how not listening to a patient can have a devastating effect on the treatment a patient receives • If researchers and clinicians come to understand how the patient makes meaning of their illness, treatment and care plans can take a more individualised and person-centred approach that could promote positive health outcomes and greater patient satisfaction
The Interaction of Class and Gender in Illness Narratives
Sociology, 2008
Perspectives on gender and identity that emphasize variability of performance, local context and individual agency have displaced earlier paradigms.These are now perceived to have supported gender stereotypes and language ideologies by emphasizing gender difference and homogeneity within genders. In a secondary analysis of health and illness narratives we explore the interaction of class and gender in individuals' constructions of gendered identity. High social class men perform gender in particularly varied ways and we speculate that this variable repertoire, including the use of what was once termed `women's language', is linked to a capacity to maintain social distinction and authority. Men's performance of conventional masculinity is often threatened by both the experience of illness and being interviewed about personal experience. Lower social class women in particular demonstrate an intensification of a pre-existing informal family and support group culture, ma...
Family narratives of lives with persistent physical symptom conditions
Clinical Child Psychology and Psychiatry
Background Literature reviews revealed no existing research on family narratives of living with multigenerational persistent physical symptom (PPS) conditions. The current study examined the personal and family narratives of one such family, from a relational/systemic perspective. Method This research employed a qualitative research design, specifically using narrative methodologies to explore the experiences of a single family comprising two parents and their three children. All the children and their mother had a diagnosis of Ehlers–Danlos syndrome (EDS) but are specifically afflicted with PPS. The father is in good health. Using narrative inquiry, the family members were interviewed together and then individually. The interviews were audio-recorded, transcribed and analysed using narrative analysis in NVivo. Findings Overarching narratives were stories of loss and sacrifice and stories of family unity. An exploration of the family’s negotiation of roles and identities is presente...