Meaning Of Illness

First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book is based on collective research carried out during the 1980s. This edition appears ten years after the original publication in French. Since then we have experienced many changes. In the late decade, disciplines have changed, as have the societies being researched. The outbreak of AIDS in Africa and the industrial world is not the least of these major and influential changes. The reader today will be sensitive to these changes and this research maintains its value as an intellectual endeavour and a useful model.

In response to a request by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the Institute of Medicine proposed a study to examine definitions of serious or complex medical conditions and related issues. A seven-member committee was appointed to address these issues. Throughout the course of this study, the committee has been aware of the fact that the topic addressed by this report concerns one of the most critical issues confronting HCFA, health care plans and providers, and patients today. The Medicare+Choice regulations focus on the most vulnerable populations in need of medical care and other services-those with serious or complex medical conditions. Caring for these highly vulnerable populations poses a number of challenges. The committee believes, however, that the current state of clinical and research literature does not adequately address all of the challenges and issues relevant to the identification and care of these patients.

This work provides a phenomenological account of the experience of illness and the manner in which meaning is constituted by the patient and the physician. The author provides a detailed account of the way in which illness and body are apprehended differently by doctor and patient. This title has been awarded the first Edwin Goodwin Ballard Prize in Phenomenology.

Health and Illness in Close Relationships provides an integrated theoretical framework for understanding the complexities of health trajectories and relationship processes. It is the first volume to review and synthesize current empirical evidence and associated theoretical constructs from the literature on health and illness in close relationships across the social and behavioral sciences. In doing so, it provides a unique cross-disciplinary understanding of how health and illness redefine relationships. The volume also maps out an explanatory framework of how the pathways and processes of close relationships pose considerations for resilience and flourishing or, on the contrary, for relational and health decline. It will appeal to researchers and students across psychology, communication, and relationship studies, as well as to health professionals who are interested in understanding how health conditions can shape or be shaped by patients' close relationships.

"Speaking of Sadness, based on fifty in-depth interviews, provides first-hand accounts of the depression experience while discovering clear regularities in the ways that personal identities are shaped over the course of an "illness career." The new edition of the book is highlighted by a thoroughly new and extensive introduction"--

From one of America's most celebrated psychiatrists, the book that has taught generations of healers why healing the sick is about more than just diagnosing their illness. Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines -- figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way. But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones. It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring. Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.

The chapters in this collection, representing the multidisciplinary character of the conference, provide a careful exposition on health, illness, and disease from disciplines that are sometimes neglected or dismissed by so-called pure science or medical research.

How do communities protect and improve the health of their populations? Health care is part of the answer but so are environmental protections, social and educational services, adequate nutrition, and a host of other activities. With concern over funding constraints, making sure such activities are efficient and effective is becoming a high priority. Improving Health in the Community explains how population-based performance monitoring programs can help communities point their efforts in the right direction. Within a broad definition of community health, the committee addresses factors surrounding the implementation of performance monitoring and explores the "why" and "how to" of establishing mechanisms to monitor the performance of those who can influence community health. The book offers a policy framework, applies a multidimensional model of the determinants of health, and provides sets of prototype performance indicators for specific health issues. Improving Health in the Community presents an attainable vision of a process that can achieve community-wide health benefits.

In August, 1985, the 2nd International Conference on Illness Behaviour was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The first International Conference took place one year previous in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. This book is based on the proceedings of the second conference. The purpose behind this conference was to facilitate the development of a single integrated model to account for illness experience and presentation. A major focus of the conference was to outline methodological issues related to current behaviour research. A multidiscipl~nary approach was emphasized because of the bias that collaborative efforts are likely to be the most successful in achieving greater understanding of illness behaviour. Significant advances in our knowledge are occurring in all areas of the biological and social sciences, albeit more slowly in the latter areas. Marked specialization in each of these areas has lead to greater difficulty in integrating new knowledge with that of other areas and the development of a meaningful cohesive model to which all can relate. Thus there is a major need for forums such as that provided by this conference.