University of Twente Student Theses
Well-being in the perspective of chronic illness
Fingal, D. M. (2022) Well-being in the perspective of chronic illness.
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| Abstract: | Chronic illness brings about a biographical disruption. Being diagnosed creates a divide between a person’s past and future aspirations. Through narratives of the past, participants construct well-being based on questions concerning living with a chronic illness and adapting to this biographical disruption. As well-being is an essential factor in living with a high quality of life, this study aims to answer how well-being is constructed in the past and future narratives of chronically ill individuals. Thirty narratives were analysed based on the content of the narratives regarding the concepts of well-being and the mention of chronic illness. Participants were asked to write a letter about their illness experience and a letter of the future. Thematic analysis was used to analyse how well-being is constructed in illness experience and future letters. Codes were formulated both deductively using theories of well-being and inductively by reading the data. The past narratives included themes of pain and dependence, losing sense of self, invisibility and diagnosis and clarity. These themes contain expressions of change and the difficulties in dealing with becoming ill. The future narratives included themes such as social understanding and acceptance, ability to do more and pursue dreams, acceptance of illness and living better, cure and returning to normal and loss of hope and letting go. The overarching theme here is hope. Hope for better well-being, hope for a positive future, unrealistic hope and loss of hope. To conclude, well-being in the past narratives was constructed more negatively than in the future letters. Future studies should look at how hope, illness type, onset and duration influence well-being. It would also be interesting to research how a person’s personality, identity, background and perception of illness, and perception of work performance might influence their well-being and adjustment to the biographical disruption due to chronic illness. |
| Item Type: | Essay (Master) |
| Faculty: | BMS: Behavioural, Management and Social Sciences |
| Subject: | 70 social sciences in general, 77 psychology |
| Programme: | Psychology MSc (66604) |
| Link to this item: | https://purl.utwente.nl/essays/92983 |
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