Contextualizing Illness: Analyzing the Relevance of Illness Narratives in Understanding Mental and Physical Disability

A severe illness, whether physical or psychological, has the power to redefine a person’s existence and reality. It effects the individual’s ordinary life, his emotions, moods and behaviour and reduces him or her to a shell of what they used to be. While itis true that medical sciences have been effective in eliminating various diseases, there exists a gap between the healer and the healed. The physician only looks at the patient as a subject for diagnosis or a project, a number or a diagnosis. What they fail to understand is how grave of an emotional scar is caused by the disease. In the select narratives an attempt has been made to understand how illness narratives are crucial to understand the individualistic experience of illness and also to bridge the gap between the healer and the victim. Moreover, it also reveals how illness takes over the lives of the victims and makes them feel unsafe in their own bodies- as if being exiled from their own home.