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"Do You Have Anything to Add?" Narrative as Reflection and Commentary on the Social Experience of Mental Illness
Author(s) -
Appleton Ann
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
anthropology and humanism
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.153
H-Index - 17
eISSN - 1548-1409
pISSN - 1559-9167
DOI - 10.1525/ahu.2000.25.1.24
Subject(s) - mental illness , narrative , perspective (graphical) , alienation , psychology , context (archaeology) , mental health , social psychology , sociology , psychotherapist , history , linguistics , philosophy , archaeology , artificial intelligence , computer science , law , political science
This article argues that a phenomenological study of mental illness constructed from first‐person subjective narratives can make a substantial contribution to our understanding of illness in terms of ordinary human experience. I suggest that the social experience of mental illness is primarily one of alienation and that this is both an internal and externally imposed experience. I conclude by proposing that the anthropological perspective—seeing the person within his or her wider cultural context, including both spatial and temporal dimensions—has the potential to generate new insights into how we might mitigate the alienating and depersonalizing effects of the mental illness experience. On another level, this article represents my attempt, as a mother, to come to terms with a mental health crisis within my own family.