Making sense of the narratives of chronically ill persons

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: Understand how chronically ill persons reframe life through their discursive practices. METHODS: Six interviews were selected from the original seventeen made with chronically ill persons from a public hospital in the metropolitan region of Porto Alegre. Recorded and transcribed interviews produced narratives concerning the existential situation in the face of disease, perspectives for the future, a comprehension of diagnosis and of therapy as well as the role of professionals for the reframing. Talks were divided in linguistic repertoires concerning diagnosis and therapy. RESULTS: In the first, the narratives of meaning are structured around cause of the disease from a genetic background (destiny) or due to the style of life (fault). In the repertoires about therapy, narratives of the self identity reconfiguration depend on the autonomy or heteronomy in relation to the physician's words as mediator of salvation, on perception of the body as a factor of relation, on the social representation of medication and on emotional situation. CONCLUSION: Self -satisfaction relies on finding the thread to bring together the elements of existence based on a new model permitting a new identity. The professional must be involved in the narratives of identity reconstruction enabling therapy to produce the expected effect and for the patient to feel as a participant of the process, assuming with autonomy the necessary changes in life.