Exploring the lived experience of physical and mental illness using a hermeneutic phenomenological framework

Despite common co-morbidity of physical and mental health conditions, they remain analytically separated. Using a hermeneutic phenomenological framework, we investigate bodily and emotional dimensions of the lived experience of physical and mental illness. The existential lifeworld framework of van Manen is used to interpret experientially based meaning-making through embodied encounters with physical illness. Ten individuals with long-term physical health conditions were interviewed. Existential lifeworlds intertwined across themes and lived-body took central position within embodied experientially based meaning-making. Embodied meanings made within emotionally charged settings shaped the physical-mental-illness cycle, with dynamic emotions unbounded by time, shaping individual lifeworlds. Changing perceptions of lived-time and lived-space were shaped by the bodily and emotional experiences of physical health conditions. Conceptualisations of self-identity and mattering challenged internal worlds. Lived-relations were experienced in mattering to others. Self-identity shaped existential changes across lived-time, lived-relations and lived-space. Embodied mental health shaped lived-things with digital technologies supporting their needs.