Reading 'Illness'

Over the UK holiday period in-between searching the literature (pre-reading list) for the next module I've been catching up with very overdue book reviews.

Havi Carel's book Illness (2013) [2nd edition] was received December 2013 and is thankfully short and very readable. The review's still to follow as I am just halfway through, but there is a point in the preface (xvi) that cascades down each side of Hodges' model as Prof. Carel identifies two approaches to how illness is approached:

individual
INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

group

NORMATIVIST approach sees disease as a value-laden term.	NATURALISTIC approach sees disease as a value-free concept, as biological dysfunction.
SUBJECTIVE stigma, communication, friends, compasssion...	OBJECTIVE matters of fact, procedure, targets...

What is clear already from the text is that it is probably more accurate to say that the normativist approach springs from within the sociological domain. Our attitudes to disability and illness are informed by our upbringing, family, friends, education - our formative experience. Then we are socialised into our respective health and social care roles.

Prof. Carel makes clear (up to page 72 at least) the impact (see the domains above!) of an illness upon the individual that can then be compounded by others and by the health care systems that should holistically care before it treats or palliates.

More to follow...

Many thanks to Katharine Green, Editorial Assistant, Acumen Publishing for my copy.