Valuing psychiatric patients' stories: belief in and use of the supernatural in the Jamaican psychiatric setting.
The aim of this study was to examine illness presentation and understand how psychiatric patients make meaning of the causes of their mental illnesses. Six Jamaican psychiatric patients were interviewed using the McGill Illness Narrative Interview Schedule. Of the 6, 3 representative case studies were chosen. The hermeneutic phenomenological approach and the common sense model were used in the formulation of patients' explanatory models. Results indicate that psychiatric patients actively conceptualized the causes and resultant treatment of their mental illnesses. Patients' satisfaction and compliance with treatment were dependent on the extent to which practitioners' conceptualization matched their own, as well as practitioners' acknowledgement of patients' concerns about causation, prognosis, and treatment.
The University of the West Indies.
Caryl C A B
CC
James
Karen A
KA
Carpenter
Karl
K
Peltzer
Steve
S
Weaver
D001294:Attitude to Health / Q000208:ethnology*; D001714:Bipolar Disorder / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D003210:Concept Formation; D005260:Female; D066297:Hermeneutics; D006801:Humans; D007563:Jamaica; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D033262:Narration; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology; D010349:Patient Compliance / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology; D036301:Qualitative Research; D012069:Religion and Psychology; D012563:Schizophrenia, Paranoid / Q000208:ethnology / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult
Jamaica; hermeneutic phenomenological approach; illness perception; illness representations; narratives; psychiatric patients