Exploring prostate cancer experiences among Jordanian Muslim men

<p><b>Over the last decade, prostate cancer has been the most common cancer among men around the world. This study explores the experiences of this illness among a group of Jordanian Muslim men. The study aims to identify the impacts and challenges these men face throughout their experiences with cancer. Through the exploration, the study also focuses on the effects of these impacts and challenges on the men’s bodies, lives, and their identity, particularly gender. The study used ‘biographical disruption’ and ‘liminality’ theoretical concepts of illness narrative and the works of Connell (2000, 2002, 2005) on gender as a theoretical framework. It adopted a qualitative narrative approach in order to understand this cancer experience among these men. Fifteen Jordanian Muslim men, who had been treated with radiotherapy and hormonal therapy, were recruited, and interviewed to narrate their stories with prostate cancer. Three narrative analytical approaches (thematic, holistic form, and Bamberg’s positioning model) were used and integrated with the study’s theoretical framework for analysing the men’s stories.</b></p> <p>Five main key findings resulted from the analysis as follows. First, there is a range of common and specific disruptive impacts and challenges facing these men compared with other men who have similar experiences. Second, there are differing experiences of prostate cancer among these men across the cancer trajectory and over time. Third, the family of the affected men are involved and become a part of this illness experience along with the direct involvement of the healthcare providers with the men. Fourth, there are interactions and influences between the cancer experience and the men’s masculinity. Fifth, the complexity of this experience has an influence on the men’s identity as Jordanian Muslim men. The study, therefore, adds to the existing knowledge about the experience of prostate cancer by understanding how it can be from (Jordanian) Arabic Middle Eastern and Islamic contexts. The study concludes with implications and recommendations for nursing practice, for education, and for illness narrative and narrative research.</p>

Exploring prostate cancer experiences among Jordanain Muslim men

<p><b>Over the last decade, prostate cancer has been the most common cancer among men around the world. This study explores the experiences of this illness among a group of Jordanian Muslim men. The study aims to identify the impacts and challenges these men face throughout their experiences with cancer. Through the exploration, the study also focuses on the effects of these impacts and challenges on the men’s bodies, lives, and their identity, particularly gender. The study used ‘biographical disruption’ and ‘liminality’ theoretical concepts of illness narrative and the works of Connell (2000, 2002, 2005) on gender as a theoretical framework. It adopted a qualitative narrative approach in order to understand this cancer experience among these men. Fifteen Jordanian Muslim men, who had been treated with radiotherapy and hormonal therapy, were recruited, and interviewed to narrate their stories with prostate cancer. Three narrative analytical approaches (thematic, holistic form, and Bamberg’s positioning model) were used and integrated with the study’s theoretical framework for analysing the men’s stories.</b></p> <p>Five main key findings resulted from the analysis as follows. First, there is a range of common and specific disruptive impacts and challenges facing these men compared with other men who have similar experiences. Second, there are differing experiences of prostate cancer among these men across the cancer trajectory and over time. Third, the family of the affected men are involved and become a part of this illness experience along with the direct involvement of the healthcare providers with the men. Fourth, there are interactions and influences between the cancer experience and the men’s masculinity. Fifth, the complexity of this experience has an influence on the men’s identity as Jordanian Muslim men. The study, therefore, adds to the existing knowledge about the experience of prostate cancer by understanding how it can be from (Jordanian) Arabic Middle Eastern and Islamic contexts. The study concludes with implications and recommendations for nursing practice, for education, and for illness narrative and narrative research.</p>

Exploring prostate cancer experiences among Jordanain Muslim men

<p><b>Over the last decade, prostate cancer has been the most common cancer among men around the world. This study explores the experiences of this illness among a group of Jordanian Muslim men. The study aims to identify the impacts and challenges these men face throughout their experiences with cancer. Through the exploration, the study also focuses on the effects of these impacts and challenges on the men’s bodies, lives, and their identity, particularly gender. The study used ‘biographical disruption’ and ‘liminality’ theoretical concepts of illness narrative and the works of Connell (2000, 2002, 2005) on gender as a theoretical framework. It adopted a qualitative narrative approach in order to understand this cancer experience among these men. Fifteen Jordanian Muslim men, who had been treated with radiotherapy and hormonal therapy, were recruited, and interviewed to narrate their stories with prostate cancer. Three narrative analytical approaches (thematic, holistic form, and Bamberg’s positioning model) were used and integrated with the study’s theoretical framework for analysing the men’s stories.</b></p> <p>Five main key findings resulted from the analysis as follows. First, there is a range of common and specific disruptive impacts and challenges facing these men compared with other men who have similar experiences. Second, there are differing experiences of prostate cancer among these men across the cancer trajectory and over time. Third, the family of the affected men are involved and become a part of this illness experience along with the direct involvement of the healthcare providers with the men. Fourth, there are interactions and influences between the cancer experience and the men’s masculinity. Fifth, the complexity of this experience has an influence on the men’s identity as Jordanian Muslim men. The study, therefore, adds to the existing knowledge about the experience of prostate cancer by understanding how it can be from (Jordanian) Arabic Middle Eastern and Islamic contexts. The study concludes with implications and recommendations for nursing practice, for education, and for illness narrative and narrative research.</p>

A Qualitative Study of Illness Narratives that Demonstrate the Master Plot of Overcoming the Monster and Support Stroke Survivors in Utilising it

(1) Background; limited research exists which considers master plots expressed by individuals with Stroke. The literature so far has focused on identified pre-established illness narrative types; (2). Methods: A narrative method was selected and a purposive sample of individuals with Stroke are identified. A categorical-form analysis was undertaken; (3) Results: A narrative master plot named overcoming the monster is identified and explored for its components and located temporally for each participant; (4) Conclusions: Health care professionals need to understand the importance of understanding the master plot overcoming the monster. This research supports the need for health care professionals to recognise and support narratives by listening in a non-directive way.

Significações de viver com depressão na velhice

Este artigo objetiva analisar os sentidos atribuídos à vivência da depressão por idosos. Trata-se de uma pesquisa de campo, exploratória, descritiva, do tipo transversal e de abordagem qualitativa. Para a caracterização dos participantes foi utilizado um questionário sociodemográfico e para a coleta de dados foi utilizada a Entrevista Narrativa de Doença - McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI), entrevista semiestruturada, traduzida, adaptada e validada para o Brasil. Foram analisadas 8 narrativas segundo a metodologia Análise de Conteúdo (Bardin, 2011), e foram sistematizadas as seguintes categorias: (I) A depressão atrelada aos sentidos sociais, agrupando as narrativas que apontam o estigma deste adoecimento psíquico, sendo principalmente relacionando com a loucura; (II) Sentimentos vinculados a depressão e suas repercussões nos laços sociais, incluindo falas sobre a irritabilidade, desânimo e inibição, e necessidade do reconhecimento do outro em relação ao seu sofrimento; e (III) Depressão associada às perdas e lutos de uma vida, havendo associação entre a depressão na velhice como um acúmulo sucessivas perdas familiares. Considera-se que o sujeito idoso acometido pela depressão necessita ser escutado, considerando as possibilidades de ressignificar lutos e histórias de vida, para tanto a importância de um amparo subjetivo e social.

Chicken Doctors and the Trials of Transcendence

This autoethnographic, multidisciplinary illness narrative describes the working conditions of a crew of Latina/o chicken workers (gallineras/os) in North Carolina and explores how these laborers respond to and make meaning of their brutal and dehumanizing work. Transporting us back to a pre-pandemic era, this project seeks to demonstrate how systemic conditions, exacerbating health disparities among poultry workers during COVID-19, are, in fact, endemic and will persist after a post-pandemic US society. Engaging with medical anthropological scholarship that investigates the intersections between Latina/o labor, legislation, and health, this project employs structural violence and structural vulnerability frameworks to investigate the network of structures that contribute to poor health outcomes among Latina/o immigrant workers. “Chicken Doctors” explores how disabling working conditions and their attending legislative and occupational policies debilitate Latina/o immigrant workers, and it argues that gallinera/o labor must be understood as a form of illness, as their toil leaves them with daily pains and lasting impairments. The project draws from an interview with the author’s father, who worked as a gallinera/o laborer and manager for over two decades, as well as from the author’s own observations and journal entries written during his work as a gallinera/o. The piece details the incapacitating gallinera/o labor required to move and vaccinate chickens, describes the toxic working environments, and reflects upon the collective strategies for transcendence that gallineras/os employ to survive their conditions. While this project unveils the spirited resilience of gallineras/os, who make up an essential link in the poultry industry chain but are less conspicuous than their meatpacking counterparts, it especially seeks to expose the network of injustices surrounding their labor.

Values, Meanings, Hermeneutics and Mental Health

A patient with neuropsychiatric symptoms was presented. The relevance of hermeneutics to the explanation and understanding of her illness experience and expression was highlighted. Her illness narrative was reviewed as a multi-layered discourse, and the clinical outcome through this hermeneutic analysis and intervention was reported. The complex interplay between values culture and meaning in the experience and expression of mental illness was summarized, demonstrating how hermeneutics facilitates values-based practice (VBP) to promote mental health and well-being.