Repositori URV

Identifier: TDX:1209

Handle: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11797/TDX1209

Authors:
Masana Bofarull, Lina

Abstract:
The aim of this research is to gain insight into the experience and management of chronicity, understood as an analytical category that includes different types of illnesses or sufferings –biomedically diagnosed or not– that persist for a long period of time. The study, carried out in the autonomous community of Catalonia (Spain), focuses on adults between the ages of thirty and fifty who suffer from chronic health problems. The ethnographic gaze centers on their illness narratives and on how relationships between chronically ill and healthy persons are shaped in social life by sociocultural representations of chronicity. The temporal dimension of illness, the relative youth of the participants and the care needs specific to this age group, and the invisibility of many chronic illnesses are some of the key elements in a common denominator of shared experience within chronicity. These factors highlight individual, family, social, work, economic, and health policy problems that demand solutions.