From the Outside the Bubble series, this time with Jana Declercq!
Chronic pain is a complex and multilayered illness experience, and consequently a significant medical and social challenge, for several reasons. First, there often is not/no longer a clear physical cause for chronic pain, while biomedicine traditionally strongly orients to finding such a cause for diagnosis and treatment. Second, pain as such is a fundamentally private and inaccessible experience, and even more so when it is chronic in nature – for chronically ill patients, typical forms of pain communication, both verbal and non-verbal, tend to be less present, in comparison to patients suffering from acute pain. Third, chronic pain patients still experience stigma and lack of recognition, within medicine and beyond.
This presentation aims to understand this complexity and multilayered nature of the chronic pain experience, by taking an interdisciplinary perspective: I combine a sociolinguistic approach with insights from biomedicine, health sociology, and philosophy. I analyse interactions between patients and health professionals and research interviews with patients collected in a pain clinic, and explore the discursive construction of the body, pain, illness and medical treatment in this data set. More specifically, I zoom in on how many of the complexities surrounding chronic pain can be related to the pervasiveness of mind-body dualism in Western medical thinking, and other specific constructions of the interplay between body, the mind and the social. To conclude, I will discuss implications for clinical practice, and reflect on what it means to study this phenomenon from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Date & Time: 12.06.2024, 16.00-17.30
Location: to be announced (City Centre Groningen)
Costs: FREE
Registration is mandatory because there is a limited number of seats.
By filling out the registration form, you agree to our terms and conditions