A PSYCHOLOGICAL STUDY OF ILLNESS NARRATIVES

从健康心理学的生物心理社会观点来看，关注疾病的心理和社会方面，即主观疾病经历或疾病叙述，以及生物学方面是很重要的。人们似乎通过各种寻求帮助的行为或应对疾病的行为来发展自己的疾病叙事。这一系列研究的目的是考察主观疾病经历/疾病叙述。定量研究采用小规模的探索性研究，考察人们如何用健康日记法对待日常健康问题。研究人员从64名能够连续7天记录健康日记的男性和女性中收集了疾病发作的数据。多数病例在大众医院，特别是在家中接受治疗。也有人认为，人们对自己的疾病有自己的叙述，他们的实际行为和家庭成员的叙述影响了他们的疾病叙述。作为定性研究，我们对一些乳腺癌患者及其亲属进行了关于他们的疾病叙述或经历的访谈。从常识性模型和基层转诊制度两方面对数据进行了分析。研究发现，患者发展了他们自己的疾病叙述，并且外行转诊系统以各种方式影响了他们。对疾病经历或疾病叙述的定性研究方法也进行了讨论，因为这些研究兴趣在日本相对较新。

From the biopsychosocial view of health psychology, it is important to focus on the psychological and social aspects of sickness, namely subjective illness experiences or illness narratives, as well as on the biological aspects. It seems that people develop their own illness narratives through the various help-seeking behaviors or coping behaviors for sickness. The purpose of a series of these studies was to examine the subjective illness experiences/ the illness narratives.As the quantitative study, the small-scale exploratory research was operated to examine how people treat their daily health problems by health diary method. The data of sick episodes were gathered from 64 men and women who could keep the health diaries for a continuous seven days period. Most of sick episodes were treated in popular sector, especially at home. It was also suggested that people had their own narratives about their sickness and that the actual behaviors and the narratives of their family members affected their illness narratives.As the qualitative study, some breast cancer patients and their relatives were interviewed on their illness narratives or experiences. The data were analyzed from the point of the commonsense model and the lay referral system. It was found that the patients developed their own illness narratives and that the lay referral system affected them in various ways.The qualitative research methods on illness experiences or illness narratives were also discussed, as these research interests were relatively new in Japan.