Chronic illness Flashcards
How do long term conditions affect quality of life?
Using the EQ-5D (a standardised tool measuring health status) hay lower QL scores for those with a LTC.
People with a long-term mental health condition have the lowest QL
Describe the crisis approach labelling theory
The crisis approach labelling theory focuses on the societal reaction to, rather than the physical impact of, living with a chronic illness.
‘Diagnosis irreversibly changes the status of the individual’.
Describe the secondary deviance and stigmatisation
Shared cultural stereotypes become attached to conditions. Eg STD carries negative connotations.
As a result, there is behaviour-change following diagnosis to conform to the cultural stereotypes of that condition= secondary deviance.
Secondary deviance alters a person’s self-regard and hence social participation.
Disease labels= self-fulfilling prophecy which affect personal and social identity, causing stigmatisation.
Describe the different types of stigma as a result of chronic illness.
Social stigma caused by a disease label may cause discriminatory experiences (enacted stigma).
It can also result in ‘imagined’ social reaction or internalised blame regarding the health condition, which can change a person’s self-identity (‘felt stigma’).
Stigma can also spread out from the patient to ‘infect’ others who are close to them eg parents (‘courtesy stigma’ or ‘stigma by association’).
Describe the biographical disruption framework
‘Biographical disruption’ (Bury:1997): the experience of living with a chronic condition is a potential loss of ‘self’ in a struggle to maintain ‘normality’.
A conception of social and physical effects of a disease in everyday life, rather than the more immediate impact of labelling/diagnosis.
But this model does acknowledge the importance of the social symbolic meanings attached to disease labels.
How does chronic illness change relationships?
Social relationships are tested by the increased support needed by someone with a chronic condition.
This requires the individual to engage in a process of ‘renegotiating’ their existing relationships, an active coping response to changing social circumstances (known as ‘comeback’)
Integrate the biological and social aspects of living with chronic illness
The body is central to an individual’s self-conception.
Biological facts become social facts because others often continue to respond to individuals in terms of their physicality.
Changes to self-conceptions are often directly reciprocal to changes in bodily experiences.
