ILLNESS AMBIGUITY AND THE SEARCH FOR MEANING

Abstract

This article reports on a group of people who met weekly to discuss problems associated with suffering from depression or manic depression. Group discussion constituted a collective search for meaning about an inherently ambiguous chronic illness. The analysis in the article centers on how the members of this self-help group collectively produced a perspective for making sense of their trouble. Although group discussion covered a range of topics, questions about the meaning of diagnosis, the extent of personal responsibility for the illness, the nature of members' reliance on medical experts, and the efficacy of psychotropic medications were dominant themes. Data illustrate how group discussion generated a rhetoric that provided plausible explanations for members' shared difficulty while protecting their identities. Group talk also implied an antipsychiatry ideology that questioned medical dominance in the treatment of affective disorders.