Words about body and soul: Social representations relating to health and illness

Abstract

The purpose was to examine a sample of Stockholm residents' social representations of their physical and mental health and ill-health. Four open-ended questions were answered by 1240 people between 18-80 years. A thematic analysis revealed nine aspects of health: physical, lifestyle, psychological, social, recreational, work and study, treatment, other and multifactorial aspects. Some cross-cutting themes were described to have an impact on health: empowerment, health-conscious lifestyle, life balance and life perspective. A key result is the interdependence between physical and mental health that was described by the respondents.

Sex-related illness perception and self-management of a Thai type 2 diabetes population: a cross-sectional descriptive design

“…This might reflect that there is a different view of diabetes among people from diverse social contexts. While most Western people are shown to hold a strong belief in the biomedical model and to focus on self-responsibility [ 42 ], research conducted with Eastern people has found that they place a high value on a holistic view of health and illness, connecting with family closeness and religious beliefs [ 43 ] and social norms and values [ 44 ]. Corresponding to previous studies of Thai women with diabetes, the close attentiveness, encouragement, and understanding among the members in Eastern families [ 45 ] and their Buddhist beliefs [ 46 ] may have empowered our participants to improve their mental strength and have enabled them to accept their fate and to remain calm.…”

Changing the diagnosis from epilepsy to PNES: Patients’ experiences and understanding of their new diagnosis

“…Patients with other MUS have also described that it is essential to feel believed (205). Although there may be some characteristics of people with PNES at the group level, that may influence their interpretation of their symptoms, it seems likely that people with other MUS have the same need to be believed, and also the same need to preserve their actual identity when faced with their diagnosis.…”

Metaphors and Representations of Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: Comment on the Article by Sutanto et al

“…However, in qualitative research and reviews, findings strictly depend on the researchers' perspectives and questions (). In this regard, from a social psychology perspective, we suggest that an interesting point of view for considering the growing corpus of qualitative studies is the social representation theory (), with a specific focus on metaphors that patients adopt to describe their condition. In simple terms, the purpose of all representations is to make something unfamiliar familiar, and metaphors are functional to this process ().…”