Views of what's wrong: Diagnosis and patients' concepts of illness

Reasons for consultation and explanations of illness among Finnish primary‐care patients

“…The phenomenon of patients hesitating to disclose their illness models to doctors has been extensively documented. (Hunt et al 1989;KJeinman et al 1978). There was, however, a kind of double message among the patients interviewed conceming equality between the lay and professionai dialogues.…”

“…Patients adopt the biomedical explanations provided by the health care system only if they make sense in terms of their prior understanding. Hunt et al (1989) studied women's accounts for their illness over a four-month period following a consultation. They found that most of the women undertook major modifications of their explanations, often with an elaboration in biomedical language.…”

“…Similarly they share a perception in which illness explanations are viewed more as a collective resource than the property of individuals. Individuals draw their explanations upon these resources that are created by folk, popular and professional systems of explanations (Fitzpatrick 1984:37, Helman 1978, Hunt et al 1989, Rogers 1992. Herzlich and Pierret (1987) identified three metaphors for illness which distinguished different social representations.…”

Illness behavior in rheumatoid arthritis

“…The interview schedule, pilot tested with 10 RA patients, consisted of 13 open-ended questions addressing the following topics: interpretation and response to symptoms (symptom perception, symptom attribution, response to symptoms) and helpseeking behavior (lay referral system consultation and response, medical consultation and treatment, emotional distress, time to diagnosis and response to diagnosis). 30 to 75 minutes were conducted over a 1-year period by the principal investigator (JAS) and a research assistant who was a psychiatric nurse/doctoral student. The research assistant was trained for study purposes through 4 practice interviews by the principal investigator, and each completed 25 interviews.…”

Aspectos da identidade na experiência da deficiência física: um olhar socioantropológico

“…Todavia, será com Hunt, Jordan, Irwin (1989), Hunt, Valenzuela e Pugh (1998) e Hunt e Arar (2001) que se encontrará um equilíbrio entre as dimensões micro e macrossociais, ao tratarem da experiência da enfermidade crônica, o qual se transpôs para a deficiência física, ressalvando-se que esta não constitui necessariamente uma doença. Os autores entendem a experiência da condição crônica influenciada pelo seu próprio curso; pela persistência de construtos prévios (ideias, crenças) referentes àquela condição, levando a constantes explicações e reinterpretações ao longo do convívio com ela; e pelo ambiente social expresso pelas circunstâncias da vida diária dos sujeitos e na sua inserção na estrutura social (Hunt, Valenzuela, Pugh, 1998).…”