S2) Sociological approaches to LTCs

• Long term • Often co-morbidities • Controlled but not cured • Profound influence on lives of sufferers

Getting diagnosis: • May be period of uncertainty / ambivalence • Diagnosis can be shocking, threatening / relieving

Managing symptoms: • Cope with physical manifestations of illness • Cope with bodily changes & self-conception changes

• Coping and strategic management; cognitive process & actions • Normalisation; pre-illness lifestyle intact / redefine identity

• Protect emotional well-being of others (reduce dependency) • Maintaining normal activities (breadwinner, wife, mother) • May downplay pain to present “cheery self” (impacts youths)

• Loss of self • Former self-image crumbles away without simultaneous development of equally valued new ones • New consciousness of the body and fragility of life

• Different conditions carry different connotations • Affects how people see themselves and how others see them • Consequence of actual and imagined reaction of others

Stigma is a negatively defined condition, attribute, trait or behaviour conferring “deviant” status

• Discreditable – nothing seen, but if found out… – e.g. mental illness / HIV positive - Discredited – physically visible characteristic or well known stigma – e.g. physical disability, known suicide attempt

• Enacted stigma – the real experience of prejudice, discrimination and disadvantage (as the consequence of a condition) - Felt stigma – fear of enacted stigma, also encompasses a feeling of shame (associated with having a condition)