Making Sense of Illness

Aronowitz, R. Making Sense of Illness Science, Society, and Disease. Cambridge Cambridge University Press, 1988. 

R. A. Aronowitz, Making Sense of Illness, p. 187, emphasis added. 

Definitions relevant to classification should be reviewed before we continue. The act of classification is typically defined as the process of making sense of entities. To be more precise, classification is concerned with forming classes of entities. Determining whether something is a mental illness or... 

Snowdon C, Garcia J, Elbourne D (1997). Making sense of randomisation response of parents of critically ill babies to random allocation of treatment in a clinical trial. Soc Sci Med 45 1337-1355. 

Abjection forced a rematerialization—of self, body, and illness—by people whose unruly bodies continued to react to the built environment. Rematerialization, however, was not just a simple matter of an incomplete expulsion, a leftover after the dominant ways of making sense of the world have cut you up and spit you out. Elsewheres within here were not just remainders they were made at the often unexpected junctures... 

One of the things I ve learned is to have fun, and I ve learned to have a better sense of humor. I ve always had a sense of humor but I didn t show it off. The first time I said something that made people laugh, it was like Valium. I got on a roll and just kept going. I often laugh and make fun of the things I do or my illness. I use it as a coping mechanism, and it helps other people to be able to talk and relax. Humor is a big part of me now. 

As these accounts show, people s self-esteem and sense of integrity are deeply connected to their ability to control their personal problems. The people I spoke with had difficulty accepting fully the idea that emotional illnesses are no different from physiological problems such as heart disease or diabetes. It may be comforting to hear that antidepressant medications correct chemical imbalances in the brain just as insulin controls diabetes. But most of those I interviewed assigned different meanings to mental and physical conditions. When asked directly, they affirmed that psychiatric drugs are far more likely than other medications to make them feel bad about themselves ... 

The ways adolescents view illness and medication make sense only in the context of the social structures that define their lives. Each of the ten stories collected for this chapter involves students experiences at school. As their conversations will show, teenagers today struggle with a sense of powerlessness, alienation from adult authority, and competition for respect. 

Once we neglect corrections of order n 1+ 2, the mapping indeed is independent of n. This is a crucial feature, as stressed above. The mapping orders according to powers of which may be small, and not in powers of z = 3en f2, which becomes large Thus it also makes sense ill the excluded volume limit fie > 0, n. —> oc. 

Distantly related plants, such as rose, jasmin, and lavender have quite independently gone down this road of complexity, based on different groups of chemical constituents. We may conclude, therefore, that complexity of odor has evolved as being the most effective way of evoking a desired response from an animal with the ability to smell and the ability to memorize odor. What is remarkable is that the particular combinations of materials that individual flowers produce to make up their fragrance have, to our own sense of smell, an identity far greater than a random mixture of as many ill-assorted chemicals. Perhaps we may infer from this, in view of the similarity of our receptor cells, that the balance of materials is as important to the olfactory mechanism of the bee as it is to our own in producing a sense of identity and aesthetic pleasure. 

Given the high prevalence of psychiatric illness and specialized expertise required for successful pharmacy practice, it makes sense that psychiatric pharmacy has become one of the five specialty practice areas certified by the U.S. Board of Pharmaceutical Specialties. As of December 2001, there were 387 certified psychiatric pharmacy specialists."" The certification process started in 1990, when a coalition of educators and practitioners identified a need to define the specialized knowledge and skills required to function as a competent psychiatric pharmacy specialist.The coalition s petition was sponsored by the ASHP and the first examination took place in December 1996. 

Initially the model was compiled using both experimentally measured and theoretically calculated kinetic parameters. Then, the results of simulations were compared with the data of multiple experiments and sensitivity analysis was employed to select the parameters, which should be corrected for the better agreement between experimentally observed and simulated kinetic behavior. The computation routine can perform the modification of each kinetic parameter within the range of its initial uncertainty. Such an approach gives a serious cause for criticism, since the discrepancies with experimental data are eliminated (or minimized) by changing the values of multiple parameters. First, this makes all of them correlated. Next, an independent correction of just one parameter in the model, or just a slight modification of the micro-chemical scheme leads to the readjustment of the whole system of kinetic parameters. This is in a certain sense equal to the solution of the inverse kinetic task, which, as we mentioned above, is an ill-conditioned problem. 

Herbalists also believe that combining herbs improves efficacy and reduces adverse effects. When compounded by knowledgeable practitioners, some of the remedies do make sense. The combination of Devil s claw, white willow, and tumeric, all agents with antiinflammatory effects, is rational, and quite probably effective. But combining St. John s Wort, which contains a selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor, with Ephedra, which causes increased catecholamine release, is both dangerous and ill advised. 

Depression is a holistic illness that affects every aspect of who we are as human beings. It only makes sense to address it from every available angle, both with regard to our bodies and brain chemistry and vis-i-vis our psyches and spirits. So in this book, I offer you a revolutionary model for treating depression, one that integrates physical, mental, and spiritual approaches to help you discover the chemistry of joy —that mysterious mix of body, mind, and spirit that Thoreau called the condition of life. ... 

A healthcare provider knows how to recognize symptoms of a disease and knows what medications are used to treat the disease so it makes sense to self-treat when he or she becomes ill. This is especially tme when the healthcare... 

Another possible application of SELDI comes with the included analysis software. With it you can determine the quantitative differences between two spectra (e.g., ill/healthy or drug/without-drug). This makes sense with SELDI, because the spectra are fairly reproducible... 

To start with a thermodynamic description of an object of interest, it is best to define it as a system as illustrated schematically in Fig. 2.16. The system must be well delineated from its surroundings by real or imaginary boundaries. These surroundings are in the widest sense the rest of the universe. This makes the surroundings ill defined. One simply does not know the size, content, and behavior of the universe. For this reason, it is convenient to work with the system alone and separately assess and account for the effects of the surroundings. 

---