define illnes and disease
illness is what we feel when we go to visit a doctor and disease is what we have after we have been to the doctor’s office and we are on our way back home.
define health
health is the capacity to be come sick and to recover, is contextually dependant and not at all about becoming ’normal’ –instead it is the capacity to continue living your life in a wide array of different circumstances which become normal to YOU
Define contested diagnoses
Contested illnesses show the multidirectional directional flow of interpretive work in ‘doing’ health and illness and it gets political – eg you consider yourself ill but few agree you have a disease (ie ME)…or…
* Others think that you have a disease but you yourself consider you are just one more variation of how to be normal (ie successfully living with mental health issues or perhaps with D/deafness
Define Health Care Pluralism
Health care pluralism refers to the coexistence of multiple health systems or approaches to healing within a society. Key idea: People don’t always rely on just one system. They may move between or combine different approaches, depending on beliefs, access, and experience.
Define Hierarchies of Resort
A Hierarchy of Resort describes the sequence or order in which people actually seek care from these different systems when they are ill. Example:
A sick person might first try home remedies, then go to a traditional healer, and only later seek biomedical treatment at a clinic — this sequence is their hierarchy of resort. (can be influenced by many things eg culture , money)
Define “the language of distress”
The language of distress refers to the ways people express suffering, pain, or illness — especially when they don’t have access to formal medical terms or when cultural norms shape how distress is communicated. Eg A person saying “my heart is broken” — may mean emotional suffering, not a physical problem.
A refugee having stomach pain and dizziness that turns out to be trauma or anxiety.
