Entangled Illnesses: Embodied Experiences of Managing Multimorbidity

Area of Science:

• Sociology of Health and Illness
• Public Health
• Qualitative Health Research

Background:

• Multimorbidity, the coexistence of multiple long-term conditions, is a growing public health concern.
• Existing healthcare systems often rely on a single-disease model, which may not adequately address the complexities of multimorbidity.
• The lived experience of managing intertwined symptoms in multimorbidity requires further sociological investigation.

Purpose of the Study:

• To sociologically analyze how individuals with coexisting chronic conditions experience and manage symptom blurriness and illness entanglement.
• To explore the decision-making processes individuals use to navigate their health when faced with multiple, overlapping conditions.
• To identify discrepancies between patients' lived experiences of multimorbidity and current biomedical and healthcare structures.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative interviews were conducted with individuals living with endometriosis, fibromyalgia, or hormonal migraine in Finland.
• Analysis focused on how participants distinguished between evolving symptoms based on past embodied experiences.
• The study examined the negotiation of health management strategies in the context of multimorbidity.

Main Results:

• Individuals with multiple chronic conditions utilize past embodied experiences to differentiate and interpret evolving symptoms.
• Coexisting illnesses become entangled in ambiguous ways, complicating treatment pathways when not adequately addressed.
• Participants' strategies for managing health reflect a nuanced understanding of their conditions that diverges from simplified biomedical models.

Conclusions:

• The lived experience of multimorbidity is characterized by blurred illness boundaries and entangled symptoms, challenging the efficacy of the single-disease model.
• Healthcare systems need to better accommodate the complexities of patients' embodied knowledge and symptom negotiation in managing multiple chronic conditions.
• Addressing the discrepancies between lived illness experiences and biomedical frameworks is crucial for improving care for individuals with multimorbidity.