Healthcare seeking for people diagnosed with severe mental illness: Sensations, symptoms and diagnostic work

Abstract

For people with mental and somatic illnesses, the interpretive process of attending to a multitude of bodily sensations and recognising them as potential symptoms represents daily and ‘chronic homework’. Based on 16 months of ethnographic fieldwork in Denmark, this study explores diagnostic work and healthcare seeking among people with severe mental and somatic illnesses. As multiple studies have shown, the transformation process for a perceived sensation to become a symptom is a socially constructed interpretative process highly dependent on social legitimisation and shaped by prior cultural knowledge. We found that people with severe mental and somatic illnesses often struggle to ‘read’ the body and its boundaries and to define and distinguish when a symptom becomes a potential sign of illness. Furthermore, they often lack opportunities for social recognition of symptoms due to the absence of social relations. Finally, lifelong experiences with the healthcare system have taught them that they must distinguish between ‘mental’ and ‘somatic’ symptoms to fit the systemic organisation of the healthcare system. This deeply rooted mind-body dualism in the organisation of healthcare services and the daily struggles of diagnostic work to comply with this organisation impacted the interlocutors’ healthcare seeking strategies. Moreover, even though they ‘make up their minds’ to seek healthcare, they risk being met with diagnostic overshadowing and reductionist clinical approaches.