Paper short abstract:

New studies in multimorbidity show an association between adult patients with multimorbidity and the experience of having had a difficult childhood. This project suggests investigating the link between children’s social relationships–with peers and important adults–and their present health profile.

Paper long abstract:

There is a significant social gradient in health, which is reflected in the pattern of multimorbidity. At the same time, research shows that nourishing social relationships can make up for existing risk factors for developing disease. Recent years' research has increased our understanding of the link between children's circumstances during childhood and the individual's physical, mental and cognitive potential throughout life. Studies have shown a connection between parents' socio-economic situation and health and the child's current and future health profile. Self-rated physical and mental health among children and young people are negatively linked with parents' social position, meaning that children of less educated mothers and children of parents on benefits report having it worst. At the same time, children who frequently experience abdominal pain, more often than other children, have mothers with a history of pain problems, serious physical illness or anxiety and/or depression. Furthermore, children with frequent headaches more often feel lonely, and children, who experience traumatic events in childhood, including severe somatic disease among close family members and/or dysfunctional family relationships and/or parental work loss, are at greater risk of developing somatic diseases. If well-functioning social relationships in childhood promote psychological well-being and provide better health throughout the individual's life, then social relationships in childhood might have a preventive effect on health over time and thereby decrease the risk of developing multimorbidity later in life. The purpose of this planned project is to explore how social relationships for children in families with low socioeconomic status and parents with multimorbidity affect their physical and mental health.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork focused on extra-institutional care in the psychiatric hospital, the paper discusses the conditions of social reintegration of chronically mentally ill persons in Poland. The theoretical focus is the functioning of a total institution in a rural context.

Paper long abstract:

This paper discusses the processes of deinstitutionalization of healthcare of chronically mentally ill persons in Poland, focusing both on the psychiatric critique of total institutions and on the shifting economic and medical contexts. The paper is based on ethnographic and historic material collected during research on the extra-institutional care organized by the biggest psychiatric hospital in eastern Poland. Since 1930s there has been implemented a form of therapy called family care, which included patients diagnosed as chronically mentally ill and therefore unable to live outside the institution who did not have any relatives. The family care consisted in delegating patients under the care of families inhabiting villages in the vicinity of the hospital. This practice was justified by psychiatric critiques of hospitalization - the environment of psychiatric hospital was considered harmful and pathological and community care was viewed more favourably. Psychiatric literature and my ethnographic research indicate strong bonds between patients and their host families which, combined with the influence of rural environment and the possibility to help with everyday chores were believed to have positive therapeutic impact even on most seriously ill patients. Nonetheless, the practice of family care was abandoned in 2012, following changes in the state healthcare system.

This paper's theoretical focus is the functioning of a total institution in a rural context. Paradoxically, it was the multifold influence of the hospital that made social reintegration of chronically ill patients possible, especially by the lessening of social fears against mentally ill persons.

Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the strategies elaborated by inhabitants of the leper's hospital of Thichilești (RO) in order to create new meanings for an almost enclosed life inside the medical institution.

Paper long abstract:

Being confined in the leprosarium meant losing your connections with the outside world due to the disease. Hansens Disease is, as Bury (1982) sugests, either a disruption of the individual`s biography for those who got it from the outside, or the biography itself for inhabitants of the institution who were born here from ill parents. In this paper I will describe the social life of Tichilești, one of the last lepers hospitals in the world. Focusing on the personal experience of those who are living in the institution, this paper will elaborate on the strategies inhabitants develop in order to construct purpose in a place almost disconnected from "liberty". Formal rules of the institution, like scheduled meals or frequent medical exams are mixed with informal practices of domestication of the hospital in order to shape a meaningfull experience oposed to a stigmatizing outside. For them, leprosy constructs the unique dichotomy of a gated well-being adjacent with a longed, but almost intangible liberty. Stigma becomes an embedded part of the daily experience as noted not just by the permanent inhabitants of the hospital, but also by some of the medical and auxiliary staff of the institution.

Paper short abstract:

This paper presents a qualitative analysis of the experiences of ten patients with thalassemia in Cyprus and their partners.

Paper long abstract:

Through a screening programme implemented in the 1970s, Cyprus has managed to control the birth of children with Thalassemia. In the 1990s the number of births of children with Thalassemia dropped to zero, while today there are about six hundred patients with Thalassemia who are under systematic blood transfusion and iron-chelation therapy. Based on in-depth interviews with ten patients and their partners, this paper explores what it means to live with Thalassemia in Cyprus. The paper discusses how patients deal the challenge of stigma and balancing between a demanding therapy schedule and a busy social life. The participants were selected from the registry of the Cyprus Thalassemia Organisation, the interviews were audio recorded, transcribed and analysed through Atlas Ti software. This qualitative research is part of a larger study which explores the quality of life of patients with Thalassemia in Cyprus and is co-funded by the Republic of Cyprus and the European Regional Development Fund. The study has been approved by the Cyprus National Bioethics Committee.

Paper short abstract:

How autism can be cared? Based on ethnography, I propose to indicate that stimulation and orientation are practiced as a daily way of development and to demonstrate that this "care that develops" is the way how the chronicity of autism is elaborated by its agents.

Paper long abstract:

Biomedical professionals say that autism cannot be cured.

They say that it will remain within the person until her last days of

life. But, on the other side, they say that its damages can be

mitigated, they say that proper stimulation and orientation can reduce

the impact of autism in a person's body and mind. This way of dealing

with this mental pathology is what the biomedical professionals and the

therapists would call recovery for the autistics. Taking stimulation and

orientation together, it can be said that, for autism, recovery is a way

of care that aims to develop the person. To work, this care has to be

intensively done in a daily basis throughout the person`s life.

How this "care that develops" is done in practice? I have been doing

ethnography with professionals and families that deal with autism in

Brazil, accompanying their practices and efforts to bring more "quality

of life" for the autistic. I would like to demonstrate that this "care

that develops" only works if it is practiced in a quotidian basis, that

is to say, if life becomes a never-ending act of stimulation and

orientation.

This will only be achieved if a collective of persons, actions, ideas

and objects are mobilized. To develop an autistic person, not only the

biomedical professionals and the therapists are working, but, also, a

whole compound of agents are stimulating and orientating the infant. The

family, here, is the main center of this work of collective collaboration.

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