LIVING WITH CHRONIC ILLNESS

Abstract

Chronic diseases are becoming more prevalent in the post-modern society. By creating the biggest consumer population for health care services, the chronic illness phenomenon is not to be neglected. Due to the complex nature of chronic diseases, it is an uphill task to identify the cause or specific aetiology. The attempt is thus turned to discerning the consequences of chronic illness on the sufferers. The traditional biomedical approach to illness locates the disease as exclusively contained within the physical body. This mistakenly ignores the social, behavioural and psychological dimensions of illness, which can strongly impact on the illness. As with all social phenomena, the meaning of chronic illness is socially constructed; different interest groups see it from varied perspectives. The reality of the chronic ill is of key concern in this thesis as chronic illness is very much a lived experience. In the illness experience of sufferers, their quality of life is of crucial importance. It is important to their everyday living with the illness and important for their psychosocial adaptation to it. This thesis is an attempt to draw out some of the individual and contextual variations that affect this quality of life. Chronic illness is of relevance to everyone, regardless if one has the disease or knows of anyone who does. This research hopes to achieve, in its humble ways, further understanding of the chronic illness experience and empathy for the chronic ill.