Identificador: TDX:4193
Autors: Becerra Castro, Jenny Paola
Resum:
This doctoral thesis aimed to problematize the suitability of the dominant medical approach in chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS/ME). It investigated the impact of its practices and violence-generating ideas through the analysis of medical discourse and the narratives of distress among patients. It also delved into the narratives of distress and corporeality, detailing the types of violence, affected needs, and suffered harm. Additionally, the role of alternative medicines in the case of CFS/ME was contextualized. To achieve this, in-depth interviews and digital focus groups were conducted with diagnosed individuals or those who identified with this diagnosis. Autoethnographic analyses were also employed, and informal holistic doctors and therapists were interviewed. A framework of interpretative phenomenology set the entire process, and Galtung's theory of violence was used as a reference to understand the manifestations of violence. Ultimately, the coding resulted in six macrocategories: types of experienced violence, experiences with healthcare professionals, somatic, mental, and spiritual effects, experiences with loved ones, experiences and expectations with alternative and complementary medicines, and manifestations of resistance. It was demonstrated that all individual needs were affected by violence, expressed culturally, structurally, and directly through minimizations, epistemic violence, gaslighting, and other actions associated with the stigma and discrediting of the illness. Regarding alternative medicines, it is concluded that they also emerge as a displacement resulting from institutional medical abandonment.
Repositori URV