Related Experiment Video
Updated: Aug 8, 2026

Real-World M3-BREATHE: Toward Multimodal Mobile Monitoring of Behaviour, Respiration, and Exposures for Treatment and Health Evaluation
Published on: June 5, 2026
Environmental sensitivity: equivocal illness in the context of place
1Department of Anthropology, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. christopher.fletcher@ualberta.ca
Abstract:
This article presents a phenomenologically oriented description of the interaction of illness experience, social context, and place. This is used to explore an outbreak of environmental sensitivities in Nova Scotia, Canada. Environmental Sensitivity (ES) is a popular designation for bodily reactions to mundane environmental stimuli that are insignificant for most people. Mainstream medicine cannot support the popular models of this disease process and consequently illness experience is subject to ambiguity and contestation. As an 'equivocal illness', ES generates considerable social action around the nature, meaning and validity of suffering. Sense of place plays an important role in this process. In this case, the meanings that accrue to illness experience and that produce salient popular disease etiology are grounded in the experience and social construction of the Nova Scotian landscape over time. Shifting representations of place are reflected in illness experience and the meanings that arise around illness are emplaced in landscape.
Related Concept Videos
Dimensions of Health and Illness
Models of Health Promotion and Illness Prevention II
The agent-host-environment model states that disease results from...
Factors Affecting Illness
For instance, risk factors are connected to illness, disability,...
Classification of Illness
An illness is a response to a disease in which the person's level of functioning is changed compared with a previous level. The general classification of illness includes acute and chronic.
Acute illness is severe and...
Concepts of Health and Illness
Psychological and Sociocultural Causes of Schizophrenia

