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pece_annotation_1479003225

erin_tuttle
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The author, Byron J. Good, is a Harvard professor in the department of global health and social medicine. He is the director of the International Mental Health Training Program, and has significant experience with field research that has led to many publications.

pece_annotation_1479003337

erin_tuttle
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Emergency response is not addressed in this article however it does provide emergency responders with insight into the stories those suffering from illness will have to explain their suffering. As emergency responders will often be working in societies and cultures very different form their own in the case of disaster response, it is important to understand that what may seem like fiction in a story cannot be dismissed without considering the deeper cultural significance of those elaborations.

pece_annotation_1479003289

erin_tuttle
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  • “… illness narratives - both the corpus of story episodes and the larger life "story" or illness narrative to which they contribute - have elements in common with fiction. They have a plot; succession is ordered as history or event, given configuration.” (164)
  • “The diverse accounts of the illness in these narratives represent alternative plots, a telling of the story in different ways, each implying a different source of efficacy and the possibility of an alternative ending to the story. My point is not that persons having access to a plural medical system do not simply choose among alternative forms of healing but instead draw on all of them” (155)
  • “Predicament, human striving, and an unfolding in time toward a conclusion are thus central to the syntax of human stories, and all of these, as we will see, are important to stories about illness experience.” (145)

pece_annotation_1479003399

erin_tuttle
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  • Throughout the article it became apparent that the individuals being interviewed were rarely prescribed medication and in some cases did not take their medication. I researched the effectiveness of epilepsy medication and severity of not treating seizures in order to better understand that specific illness.
  • The article was written using data collected in 1988. Since medical knowledge has changed dramatically since then I decided to look into the current medical situation in Turkey. Although it is challenging to find unbiased opinions it appears that even with advances in medical science, cultural traditions remain an integral part in dealing with illness in many places and needs to be understood when dealing with patients who have those beliefs.
  • A majority of the patients interviewed attribute their seizures to a traumatic moment in their past, as I was unaware that epilepsy could be triggered in such a way I looked into the causes of epilepsy. In many cases the cause cannot be identified, however there is significant evidence for epileptic fits being caused by post-traumatic stress as well as neurological trauma and even cardiac issues.

pece_annotation_1479003257

erin_tuttle
Annotation of
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The main argument is supported primarily through interviews with many individuals living in Ankara, through which they describe the first presentation of their seizures and in many cases the steps they tool to attempt a cure. Along with the interviews, statistics of the individuals interviewed and their diagnoses is used to provide a reference point to better understand their stories. Finally the article includes an analysis of narratives in a more general sense that can be applied to the narrative of an illness.

pece_annotation_1479003242

erin_tuttle
Annotation of
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The article’s main argument is that the narration of an illness is founded in the emotional connection it has to the sufferers life, the place from which they view the illness which includes individual and cultural aspects. Furthermore any lack of factual accuracy is an indicator of the social and cultural environment in which the illness presents itself and is revealing as to how it will be perceived and treated.