1,720,977 research outputs found
IMPRONTE: Breast Cancer Women: Innovative Model for Processing Traumatic Experience
No full textThe onset of early breast cancer is a traumatic experience that holds the risk of impairing the quality of life of women even years after the end of treatments. Despite medical advances to reduce the mortality rate, clinical health psychology is still researching for solutions to address the psychological impact caused. Narrative meaning-making processes of the traumatic experience are key elements to promote psychic elaboration and well-being.
Narrative Research and PI studies highlight significant markers of the transformative narrative process at the end of treatment. In this case, the narrative is a re-constructive and re-elaborative device for an already passed experience. Nowadays, narrative and diachronic markers of psychic elaboration of the traumatic experience related to the medical treatment do not exist. This project aims to fill this gap. The aim is to overturn, in an innovative way, the view of the literature, studying the narrative as a device to promote a psychic elaboration process in a diachronic way to the illness experience. This agrees with an personalized healthcare.
These markers, as functions of connection and narrative transformation, are clues of risk and/or resilience of the psychic elaboration process. These markers allow the construction of a diachronic map of the functioning flow of the traumatic elaboration related to breast cancer (Diachronic flow of Illness Narrative Elaboration Markers - DINEM). DINEM is a precious tool for health operators in order to orient them in supporting the different phases of oncological treatment. The identification of these markers also allows us to build a theoretical model of Narrative Processing of Traumatic Experience (NAPTE) of women with early breast cancer, which is still absent in the literature. This model will be able to positively impact the quality of life of women, hospitals, and health operators
Cancer Prevention Sense Making and Metaphors in Young Women’s Invented Stories
Full text linkDespite the proven effectiveness of cancer prevention, the literature highlights numerous obstacles to the adoption of screening, even at a young age. In cancer discourse, the metaphor of war is omnipresent and reflects an imperative demand to win the war against disease. From the psychodynamic perspective, the risk of cancer forecasts an emotionally critical experience for which it is important to study mental representations concerning illness and health care. Through the creation of an invented story that offers a framework for imagination, our aim is to understand what the relationship with preventive practices in oncology means for young women and how this relationship is revealed by their metaphors. A total of 58 young women voluntarily participated in the present research, answering a narrative prompt. The stories written by the participants were analyzed using qualitative methodology to identify construct, themes and metaphors. Our findings identify four constructs: the construction of a defense: youth as protection; the attribution of blame about cancer risk; learning from experience as a prevention activator; and from inaccessibility to access to preventive practices: the creation of engagement. The construction of an invented story allows us to promote a process of prefiguration on the bodily, affective and thought planes invested in preventive practice and brings out the use of metaphors to represent cancer risk and self-care. The results allow us to think about the construction of interventions to promote engagement processes in prevention from an early age
Emotions and Narrative Reappraisal Strategies of Users of Breast Cancer Screening: Reconstructing the Past, Passing Through the Present, and Predicting Emotions
No full text: Emotional forecasting, meaning how a person anticipates feeling as a consequence of their choices, drives healthcare decision-making. Research, however, suggests that people often do not fully anticipate or otherwise grasp the future emotional impacts of their decisions. Emotional reappraisal strategies, such as putting emotions into words and sharing emotions with others, may mitigate potential undesirable effects of emotions on decision-making. The use of such strategies is important for consequential decisions, such as obtaining timely mammography screening for breast cancer, whereby earlier diagnosis may impact the success of treatment. In this study, we explored the use of emotional reappraisal strategies for decision-making regarding breast cancer screening attendance among women aged 50-69 years. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews following mammography with a reflexive thematic methodological approach employed for analysis. Results shed light on how participants' emotional response narratives were reconstructed before the mammography, felt during the mammography, and forecasted while awaiting the results. Future research should consider how individuals experience and manage their emotions as they access breast screening services
Cancer blog narratives: the experience of under-fifty women with breast cancer during different times after diagnosis.
Full text linkThe recent literature shows an increase of breast cancer in women under 50,
however still few are the studies which analyse the impact of the disease in
this specific target age. This study aims at exploring the most prevalent topics
in Italian cancer blogs of women who have received a breast cancer diagnosis
before the age of 50, in order to understand their experience of illness and the
characteristics of women’s narrations at different times after diagnosis (1
year, 2 years, 3 years). We collected the textual corpus of 4 Italian breast
cancer blogs and performed a thematic analysis. Five themes resulted, which,
after interpretation using factorial mapping, fall into 3 sense vectors: toward
the thought of the experience; from the external to the internal world; breast
cancer: from rigidity to mobility. The blog analysis allows to build a first step
of the scientific knowledge about the traumatic specificity of this experience,
showing a need for processing the emotions. This allows to think about
clinical support practices tailored to this group, in order to develop a
diachronic processing of the experience and the construction of a new
continuity of life
From sense to meaning: Narrative Function Coding System for the experience of illness
Full text linkAbstract
Purpose – Consistent with current literature, which highlights the role of narration as a key tool for
exploring the processes by which people construct the meaning of their critical experiences the authors
propose a theoretical and methodological model to analyse the narratives of illness and identify any
innovative aspects. The generative model of mind presented refers to a semiotic, narrative and socio constructivist perspective according to which narration constitutes one of the possible processes by which
the affective and pre-verbal sense of experience is transformed into a meaning that can be symbolized and
shared.
Design/methodology/approach – The onset of an illness represents a critical event which interrupts a
person’s life narrative, shattering his/her biographical continuity and undermining any assumptions of
him/herself and the world. In particular, the model proposes a method of analysis, currently absent in
literature, of the narrative interview Narrative Function Coding System (NFC) in order to grasp the ways by
which four main narrative functions, namely psychic functions, are classified: the search for meaning, the
expression of emotions, the temporal organization and the orientation to action.
Findings – NFC appears to be able to capture the complexity of the narrative process of construction of illness’
sense-meaning making process, identifying both representative modalities of good functioning, which express
a gradual process of connection with the variability of the experience, and modalities that express moments of
disorganization and rigidity, which can persist throughout the time of treatment. The NFC represents not only
a method for analysing illness narratives but also a method for tracking and monitoring the process of clinical
intervention and change.
Originality/value – The sense-meaning making process perspective within the narrative socio constructivist and semiotic framework of analysis proposed by NFC is currently absent in the literature.
NFC can be a device for analysing the narrative process of sense-meaning making both for its use for clinical
and preventive purposes. In addition we believe that this method, which focuses on the “form” and “way” of
narratively constructing the subjective experience, rather than on the specific thematic content, can be used
with all types of illness narratives, in particular the longitudinal one to explore the changes in sens
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
The Relationship between Healthcare Providers and Preventive Practices: Narratives on Access to Cancer Screening
Full text linkCancer screening programs are public health interventions beneficial to early diagnoses and timely treatments. Despite the investment of health policies in this area, many people in the recommended age groups do not participate. While the literature is mainly focused on obstacles and factors enabling access to health services, a gap from the point of view of the target population concerns healthcare providers. Within the “Miriade” research–action project, this study aims to explore the dimensions that mediate the relationship between healthcare providers and preventive practices through the narrations of 52 referents and healthcare providers involved in breast, cervical and colorectal cancer screening. We conducted ad hoc narrative interviews and used theory-driven analysis based on Penchansky and Thomas’ conceptualization and Saurman’s integration of six dimensions of healthcare access: affordability, availability, accessibility, accommodation, acceptability and awareness. The results show that 21 thematic categories were representative of the access dimensions, and 5 thematic categories were not; thus, we have classified the latter as the dimension of affection. The results suggest trajectories through which psychological clinical intervention might be constructed concerning health, shared health decisions and access to cancer screening
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
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