Re-Assessing the Silent Treatment: Emotional Expression, Preventive Health, and the Care of Others and the Self

Abstract

This chapter have called for greater attention to practices of silence in different contexts and its relationship to conceptualizations of the body, emotions, risk and vulnerability. Beginning in the 1990s and throughout the first decade of the new millenium, emigration to Spain was one of the principal economic strategies that many Bolivians relied upon to earn a better living and provide a better life for their loved ones. The emotional costs of migration, however, are often very high. Families can be fragmented for years at a time and they are forced to forge new forms of intimacy with one another. As shown in this chapter, the withholding of information from relatives in Bolivia and vice versa is an act of concern for a loved one's health. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)