Narratives of Health - Lecture Three Flashcards
The journey's we make
Cassel’s definition of illness
Illness is what we feel when we go to visit a doctor and disease is what we have after we have been to the doctors and are on our way back home
Helman’s definition of illness
Illness brings on on a subjective experience of physical and emotional changes which are generally confirmed by other people
Kleinman’s definition of illness
Illness to is become temporarily demoralised with one’s world
The language of distress
Acts as a bridge between the subjective experience of impaired wellbeing and social acknowledgement of them
Examples of language of distress
Papua New Guinea - cover themselves in ashes and retreat into the bush without engagement with other people when they are ill
Nigeria - crawling ants
Steaming bones - Chinatown in Sydney
Kleinman’s Iceberg model
Lay layer (bottom), folk layer and professional layer (top) The layers are porous and blurred
Lay layer
Asking people close to you such as, mother, neighbour, roommates or friends who are not fully educated in health-care
Folk layer
People who aren’t professionals trained or paid for but try to heal
Professional layer
Professionally trained and paid for such as, doctors, dentists and pharmacists
Canguilhem’s definition of disease and health
Disease is the departure from the norm establishment by biomedical authority
Health is the capacity to become sick and to recover, is contextually dependant and not at all about becoming ‘normal’ - instead it is the capacity to continue living your life in a wide array of different circumstances which become normal to you.
Contested Diagnosis
You consider yourself ill but few agree you have a disease OR others think that you have a disease but you yourself consider you are just one more variation of how to be normal
Anne E. Pfister narrative
Dead Kids in Mexico
Outcome of Deaf Kids in Mexico narrative
Their kids weren’t disabled and there wasn’t a ‘cure’ or ‘fix’. Biomedical treatment didn’t help, so they moved away from medical treatments and adapted to the environment of the children. Travelling for health care
Predicament of disability
Predicament of disability (Shakespeare) - people are disabled by society and by their bodies (simplified)
Hierarchies of resort
The order of which we seek help
