Social Approaches To LTCs Flashcards
What are long term conditions?
• Encompasses wide range of conditions
– long term
– often profound influence on lives of sufferers
– often co-morbid conditions
- Manifestations may vary greatly day-to-day
- Controlled but not cured
- LTCs will increase with ageing population but not only older people who live with LTCs
What are illness narratives?
Illness narratives refer to the story telling and accounting practices that occurs in the face of illness.
- Much sociological research on LTCs is based on people’s narratives of their illness.
- These narratives offer a way of making sense, and they
perform certain functions.
What are the different types of work of LTCs
- Illness work
- Everyday life work
- Emotional work
- Biographical work
- Identity work
Illness work - Getting a diagnosis
- May be prolonged period of uncertainty
- Process can be very unpleasant
- Diagnosis can be
1. Profoundly shocking
2. Very threatening
3. A relief
Illness work - Managing symptoms
- Central to coping task is to deal with the physical manifestations of illness
- This has to be done before coping with social relationships
- Interaction between the body and identity
- Bodily changes - self conception changes
Illness work - Self-management
• Optimum self-management is difficult to achieve
- Poor rates of adherence to treatment
- Reduced quality of life
- Poor psychological wellbeing
• Brief interventions to improve self-management
- Delivered online/ in-person/ via telephone
- Vary in quality/effectiveness
Everyday life work - What is coping and strategic management?
- Coping – the cognitive processes involved in dealing with illness
- Strategy – actions and processes involved in managing the condition and its impact
Everyday life work: Normalisation
• You can try to keep your pre-illness lifestyle and identity
intact (e.g. by disguising or minimising symptoms)
• Or redesignate your new life as “normal life”
– This may involve people signalling changes in identity
rather than preserving old ones
What is emotional work?
- Work that people do to protect the emotional well-being of others
- Maintaining normal activities becomes deliberately conscious
• People find friendships disrupted and may strategically
withdraw or restrict their social terrain
- May involve downplaying pain or other symptoms
- Presenting “cheery self”
Emotional work - Impact on role
• Impact on role (breadwinner, wife, mother etc) may be
devastating
• Dependency
– Feeling of uselessness to self and others
• May be especially devastating for young people
