How does caregiving affect health and well-being and what resources help caregivers? This book provides a synthesis of psychological research on caregiver stress and brings attention to the personal, social and structural factors that affect caregivers' well-being and as well as recent behavioral interventions to enhance health.

What makes a disease real? Why is it that patients with chronic fatigue syndrome or fibromyalgia are doubted when they say they are in pain, and cannot access the same benefits of patient-hood that others can? What defines the limits of our belief and, ultimately, compassion, when it comes to disease? These are the questions approached in this book, which draws upon patients’ experiences and situates them among a diverse set of literatures, from the history and philosophy of medicine to the sociology of health and disease. The question of a patient’s identity and their understanding of disease is often assumed to emerge from their relationship with healthcare, but the case is made here that other, inter-personal factors are more salient. What a patient with a contested illness comes up against is not simply a medical categorisation – it is a prevailing notion of disease across society, and one they struggle to assimilate themselves into. Contested Illness in Context will appeal to students and researchers interested in fields such as the history and philosophy of medicine, the sociology of health and illness, medical anthropology, or disease and illness generally. It may also interest patients and doctors who struggle with difficult medical cases.

From one of America's most celebrated psychiatrists, the book that has taught generations of healers why healing the sick is about more than just diagnosing their illness. Modern medicine treats sick patients like broken machines -- figure out what is physically wrong, fix it, and send the patient on their way. But humans are not machines. When we are ill, we experience our illness: we become scared, distressed, tired, weary. Our illnesses are not just biological conditions, but human ones. It was Arthur Kleinman, a Harvard psychiatrist and anthropologist, who saw this truth when most of his fellow doctors did not. Based on decades of clinical experience studying and treating chronic illness, The Illness Narratives makes a case for interpreting the illness experience of patients as a core feature of doctoring. Before Being Mortal, there was The Illness Narratives. It remains today a prescient and passionate case for bridging the gap between patient and practitioner.

The Social Context of Health and Health Work breaks new ground by linking together sociology of health and social policy perspectives. Linda Jones argues that health and health work cannot be understood in isolation. Patterns of disease, illness, treatment and provision are crucially influenced by class, race, gender, age and disability. Conflicts over health policies reflect fundamental debates about the purpose of welfare. The writer draws on her specialist knowledge of developing and teaching nursing and health studies courses, and on her recent experience of writing distance learning materials, to create a book which encourages critical thinking and supports study.

Myalgic encephalomyelitis (ME) and chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) are serious, debilitating conditions that affect millions of people in the United States and around the world. ME/CFS can cause significant impairment and disability. Despite substantial efforts by researchers to better understand ME/CFS, there is no known cause or effective treatment. Diagnosing the disease remains a challenge, and patients often struggle with their illness for years before an identification is made. Some health care providers have been skeptical about the serious physiological - rather than psychological - nature of the illness. Once diagnosed, patients often complain of receiving hostility from their health care provider as well as being subjected to treatment strategies that exacerbate their symptoms. Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome proposes new diagnostic clinical criteria for ME/CFS and a new term for the illness - systemic exertion intolerance disease(SEID). According to this report, the term myalgic encephalomyelitis does not accurately describe this illness, and the term chronic fatigue syndrome can result in trivialization and stigmatization for patients afflicted with this illness. Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome stresses that SEID is a medical - not a psychiatric or psychological - illness. This report lists the major symptoms of SEID and recommends a diagnostic process.One of the report's most important conclusions is that a thorough history, physical examination, and targeted work-up are necessary and often sufficient for diagnosis. The new criteria will allow a large percentage of undiagnosed patients to receive an accurate diagnosis and appropriate care. Beyond Myalgic Encephalomyelitis/Chronic Fatigue Syndrome will be a valuable resource to promote the prompt diagnosis of patients with this complex, multisystem, and often devastating disorder; enhance public understanding; and provide a firm foundation for future improvements in diagnosis and treatment.

In response to a request by the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), the Institute of Medicine proposed a study to examine definitions of serious or complex medical conditions and related issues. A seven-member committee was appointed to address these issues. Throughout the course of this study, the committee has been aware of the fact that the topic addressed by this report concerns one of the most critical issues confronting HCFA, health care plans and providers, and patients today. The Medicare+Choice regulations focus on the most vulnerable populations in need of medical care and other services-those with serious or complex medical conditions. Caring for these highly vulnerable populations poses a number of challenges. The committee believes, however, that the current state of clinical and research literature does not adequately address all of the challenges and issues relevant to the identification and care of these patients.

From the Preface, by Arthur Kleinman: Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture presents a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between medicine, psychiatry, and culture. That framework is principally illustrated by materials gathered in field research in Taiwan and, to a lesser extent, from materials gathered in similar research in Boston. The reader will find this book contains a dialectical tension between two reciprocally related orientations: it is both a cross-cultural (largely anthropological) perspective on the essential components of clinical care and a clinical perspective on anthropological studies of medicine and psychiatry. That dialectic is embodied in my own academic training and professional life, so that this book is a personal statement. I am a psychiatrist trained in anthropology. I have worked in library, field, and clinic on problems concerning medicine and psychiatry in Chinese culture. I teach cross-cultural psychiatry and medical anthropology, but I also practice and teach consultation psychiatry and take a clinical approach to my major cross-cultural teaching and research involvements. The theoretical framework elaborated in this book has been applied to all of those areas; in turn, they are used to illustrate the theory. Both the theory and its application embody the same dialectic. The purpose of this book is to advance both poles of that dialectic: to demonstrate the critical role of social science (especially anthropology and cross-cultural studies) in clinical medicine and psychiatry and to encourage study of clinical problems by anthropologists and other investigators involved in cross-cultural research. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1980. From the Preface, by Arthur Kleinman: Patients and Healers in the Context of Culture presents a theoretical framework for studying the relationship between medicine, psychiatry, and culture. That framework is principally illustrated by materials gathered

In August, 1985, the 2nd International Conference on Illness Behaviour was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The first International Conference took place one year previous in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. This book is based on the proceedings of the second conference. The purpose behind this conference was to facilitate the development of a single integrated model to account for illness experience and presentation. A major focus of the conference was to outline methodological issues related to current behaviour research. A multidiscipl~nary approach was emphasized because of the bias that collaborative efforts are likely to be the most successful in achieving greater understanding of illness behaviour. Significant advances in our knowledge are occurring in all areas of the biological and social sciences, albeit more slowly in the latter areas. Marked specialization in each of these areas has lead to greater difficulty in integrating new knowledge with that of other areas and the development of a meaningful cohesive model to which all can relate. Thus there is a major need for forums such as that provided by this conference.

In the United States, some populations suffer from far greater disparities in health than others. Those disparities are caused not only by fundamental differences in health status across segments of the population, but also because of inequities in factors that impact health status, so-called determinants of health. Only part of an individual's health status depends on his or her behavior and choice; community-wide problems like poverty, unemployment, poor education, inadequate housing, poor public transportation, interpersonal violence, and decaying neighborhoods also contribute to health inequities, as well as the historic and ongoing interplay of structures, policies, and norms that shape lives. When these factors are not optimal in a community, it does not mean they are intractable: such inequities can be mitigated by social policies that can shape health in powerful ways. Communities in Action: Pathways to Health Equity seeks to delineate the causes of and the solutions to health inequities in the United States. This report focuses on what communities can do to promote health equity, what actions are needed by the many and varied stakeholders that are part of communities or support them, as well as the root causes and structural barriers that need to be overcome.

There is more to a person than a particular symptom or disease: patients are individuals but they are not isolated, they are part of a family, a community, an environment, and all these factors can affect in many different ways how they manage health and illness. This book provides an introduction to population, sociological and psychological influences on health and delivery of healthcare in the UK and will equip today’s medical students with the knowledge required to be properly prepared for clinical practice in accordance with the outcomes of Tomorrow’s Doctors.