Women S Narratives Of Health Disruption And Illness

Through vivid and engaging narrative accounts, written and collected by women, Women's Narratives of Health Disruption and Illness: Within and Across Their Life Stories explores how women experience the health disruptions and illnesses that span their lives. The collection examines how women’s broader and ongoing life stories impact and are impacted by health disruptions and illnesses. Organized into three parts, the chapters explore “Beginnings” in which health disruptions and illnesses impact early life, motherhood, and where early choices create the origins of health issues that impact later life; “Middles” which explores health experiences in and around middle age, or from the standpoint in middle-age looking back and forth; and “Endings” which explores narratives of ageing and end of life communication. Personal, revealing, and often beautiful, the women’s narratives featured in this book will invite the reader into the stories and lives of others, and toward the reflection, learning, and personal transformation that comes from truly connecting with the experiences of others. This book will be helpful for scholars of communication, health, women’s studies, family studies, and sociology.

A collection of women's illness narratives Stories of Illness and Healing is the first collection to place the voices of women experiencing illness alongside analytical writing from prominent scholars in the field of narrative medicine. The collection includes a variety of women's illness narratives--poetry, essays, short fiction, short drama, analyses, and transcribed oral testimonies--as well as traditional analytic essays about themes and issues raised by the narratives. Stories of Illness and Healing bridges the artificial divide between women's lives and scholarship in gender, health, and medicine. The authors of these narratives are diverse in age, ethnicity, family situation, sexual orientation, and economic status. They are doctors, patients, spouses, mothers, daughters, activists, writers, educators, and performers. The narratives serve to acknowledge that women's illness experiences are more than their diseases, that they encompass their entire lives. The pages of this book echo with personal accounts of illness, diagnosis, and treatment. They reflect the social constructions of women's bodies, their experiences of sexuality and reproduction, and their roles as professional and family caregivers. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Stories of Illness and Healing draws the connection between women's suffering and advocacy for women's lives.

"A valuable collection. . . . The essays in the volume are all fresh, the result of recent work, and the opening chapter by Garro and Mattingly places the current trend in narrative analysis in historical context, explaining its diverse origins (and constructs) in a range of disciplines."—Shirley Lindenbaum, author of Kuru Sorcery "A good place to consult the narrative turn in medical anthropology. Thick with the richness and diversity and stubborn resistance to interpretations of human stories of illness. An anthropological antidote for too narrow a framing of the complex tangle of ways-of-being and ways-of-telling that make medicine a space of indelibly human experiences." —Arthur Kleinman, author of The Illness Narratives

There is a growing interest in, and acceptance of, qualitative research approaches in the health science disciplines, both as standalone methodologies and integrated with quantitative designs in mixed methods approaches. This comprehensive text provides deeper knowledge and application of a wide range of methodologies, methods and processes, enabling readers to develop their qualitative research skills. Divided into two parts, focusing first on methodologies and then on methods and processes, the text also includes revision of essential aspects of quantitative research as they apply to mixed methods research and a discussion of the uptake of qualitative research in the health sciences. The methodologies covered include: Grounded Theory; Historical Research; Ethnography; Phenomenology; Narrative Inquiry; Case Study Research; Critical Ethnography; Action Research and Mixed Methods. The methods and processes covered include: Interviewing and Analysis; Group Work and Analysis; Narrative Analysis; Discourse Analysis. Using accessible language to help extend readers’ practical research skills, this is a thorough and reliable text to guide advanced students and researchers from all health-related disciplines – including nursing, midwifery, public health and physiotherapy – to the best use of qualitative research.

Health and illness are storied experiences that necessarily entail personal, cultural, and political complexities. For all of us, communicating about health and illness requires a continuous negotiation of these complexities and a delicate balance between what we learn about the biology of disease from providers and our own very personal, subjective experiences of being ill. Storied Health and Illness brings together dozens of noteworthy scholars, both established and emerging, in a provocative collection that embraces narrative ways of knowing to think about, analyze, and reconsider our own and others’ health beliefs, behaviors, and communication. Comprehensive content reflects the editors’ substantial research in integrative health, narrative care, and innovative ways of improving well-being and quality of life in personal relationships, healthcare, the workplace, and community settings. Unique narrative approaches to the study of health communication include: • 14 chapters written by 22 contributors who use engaging stories from their own research or personal experience to introduce and ground foundational communication concepts in healthcare, health promotion, community support, organizational wellness, and other health-related sites of interest. • Compelling stories of individuals living with the inherent challenges and unexpected opportunities of mental illness, addiction, aging, cancer, dialysis, sexual harassment, miscarriage, obesity, alopecia, breastfeeding, health threats to immigrant workers, developmental differences, and youth gun violence. • 36 Health Communication in Action (HCIA) sidebars that highlight applied research of innovative health communication scholars in their own words and then prompt readers to think more deeply about their own perspectives and experiences. • Theorizing Practice boxes that encourage readers to reflect on stories that describe significant experiences in their own and others’ lives as they consider assumptions and enlarge their viewpoints in previously unimagined ways.

This distinctive collection explores the use of narratives in the social construction of wellness and illness. Narratives, Health, and Healing emphasizes what the process of narrating accomplishes--how it serves in the health communication process where people define themselves and present their social and relational identities. Organized into four parts, the chapters included here examine health narratives in interpersonal relationships, organizations, and public fora. The editors provide an extensive introduction to weave together the various threads in the volume, highlight the approach and contribution of each chapter, and bring to the forefront the increasingly important role of narrative in health communication. This volume offers important insights on the role of narrative in communicating about health, and it will be of great interest to scholars and graduate students in health communication, health psychology, and public health. It is also relevant to medical, nursing, and allied health readers.

Narrative medicine has developed an identity already. Clinicians of many disciplines are being summoned to a practice that recognizes patients by receiving their accounts of self. Starting from different positions, the four authors have converged in a strong and shared commitment to narrative health care. They conceptualize narrative health care practices within frameworks derived from the social sciences and psychology, and, to a lesser degree, phenomenology and autobiographical theory. They relate the development of narrative medicine to relationship-centered care, patient-centered care, and complex responsive process of relating theory, positing that narrative medicine can help clinicians to develop the skills required to practice relationship-centered care. The book details - with exercises, resource texts, and abundant scholarly apparatus - how these skills can be developed and strengthened. This work will change health care. Because of its scholarly rigor, its multi-voiced sources, and its highly practical features (lists, activities, key ideas and key references, primary texts written by health care professionals and patients), this work will be a guide in the field for those who practice medicine or nursing or social work. The book establishes that there is a field to be practised, a need to practise it, and a means to develop the wherewithal to do so.

"Stephens' important and timely book provides an urgently needed and insightful synthesis of the previously fragmented field of community health psychology. A wide range of case material from both rich and poor countries is framed within a skilfully articulated set of debates around core issues of theory, practice, research and ethics. This text should be compulsory reading for all practitioners and students of health promotion." Professor Catherine Campbell, Health, Community and Development Group, London School of Economics Can the health of individuals be improved through community health programmes? How can community health promotion programmes be more effective? How is health awareness measured and evaluated? In recent years, health promoters have focused their attention not just on individual lifestyle change, but on daily social and physical conditions that surround the individual. They are now looking towards lifestyle change based on community or socially-based interventions. This book argues for the importance of theoretical explanations that inform investigations of the social context of daily life, the social relations that affect opportunities for healthy lives, and the needs of communities. Examining theories from a critical and values oriented perspective, it looks at current theories of health and health promotion, and discusses why health inequalities exist. The book includes a practical grounding, using examples of community health promotion practice, such as community arts and local community models, based on material and research from Britain, New Zealand, Canada, the USA and South America. The media's role in health promotion is also investigated, drawing on current media theory and examining media representation and the public's interpretative response. Issues surrounding the evaluation of health promotion programmes are also discussed. Health Promotion: A Psychosocial Approach provides a critical and theoretical basis for practice in social and community approaches to health promotion. It is key reading for postgraduate students of health psychology or community psychology, as well as qualified practitioners in public health areas who are developing theory based community programmes.