Illness Narratives And Social Construction Of Health

Question: Write an essay on Illness Narratives and the Social Construction of Health ? Answer: The key insight in this chapter was on socially constructed reality that results in shaping all the notions of sickness, illness and health. The social constructions lead towards creating a wall that defines the boundaries along with forging the doors by which seeing the external environment is possible (Sharf and Vanderford 9). While reading the chapter, it was of great significance to keep an argument in perspective that there are various advantages to viewing communication in health as a social construction (Sharf and Vanderford 9). Also, that there are various benefits of focusing over narratives of illness. Through use of distinct researches along with considering practical experiences in the form of narratives from women, the chapter was able to recommend that communication in health can be successfully researched through placing enhanced focus on individual experiences of the patients regarding their health and their illness. The chapter had many essential elements and the authors focused on each element to formulate an integrative chapter. Social construction approach evolution is one such element of the chapter. It was evident from this sub-section that social construction approach was adopted first in the year 1966 Luckmann and Berger (Sharf and Vanderford 9). Throughout the approachs course of development, it went through several modifications and changes such as its application in the domain of health communication. With regard to health, illness and medical care, constitutive communication model application depicts the moderating complexities present between scientific evidences and the material evidences. The approach of social construction within the domain of health communication first emerged as a biomedical perspective reaction (which has been gravely dominant in the arena of health care) (Sharf and Vanderford 21). The article moves further to illustrate that communication in medical community has been divided into 2 types of discourses. The initial type makes use of objective language for presenting information of traditional and biomedical nature. The second type makes us of subjective language for talking on illness related non-verifiable and internal experiences. Another essential fragment in the research were significance of narratives and the health scholarship based social construction. The article argued that in order to enhance the social construction approach implementation into health communication, a distinct type of scholarship is needed. Narrative inquiry is one of them (Brown 34-52). The view highlighted the origin of the stress between physical reality and symbolic appearances and the application of such process to issues of communication with regard to illness and health. Even though narrative inquiry is only one the various ways to approach research in health communication but the methods benefits lie in knowledge application with regard to implications that individuals such as authors Rose have quoted. Often, the patients voice in the clinical realm is absent because of the focus on health communication as an inquiry field (Mattingly and Garro 101-230). The personal stories construction regarding illness and pain are essential for people that deal with serious sickness. This allows the individual to make sense of a circumstance that initially might seem to have no evident explanation. The article concluded by stating that narrative inquiry according to several authors such as Bochner, (1998), is at the core of moral acts (Sharf and Vanderford 34). It implies one that has purposiveness and self-consciousness intertwined with narrators values. References Sharf, Barbara F., and Marsha L. Vanderford. "Illness narratives and the social construction of health."Handbook of health communication(2003): 9-34. Mattingly, Cheryl, and Linda C. Garro.Narrative and the cultural construction of illness and Healing. Health and social science behaviour, (2000): 101-230 Brown, Phil. "Naming and framing: the social construction of diagnosis and illness."Journal of Health and Social Behavior(1995): 34-52. Hydn, Lars Christer. "Illness and narrative."Sociology of health illness19.1 (1997): 48-69.