The Relationship Between Illness & Person’s Identity

Bibliographical disruption of illness can be understood as how illness affects a person’s identity, social life and how you view yourself (Sontag, 1979). The essay will be focusing on greater sense of those identities with which illness may interact, including the way such identities may both be threatened or reinforced by infection together with the influence of this identities on the experience of disease itself (Gerhardt, 1979). There’s a huge integration among a person sense of self and the body. Loss of identity one held before becoming sick, can be one of main reasons why there’s most hard transition with prolonged diseases, because self and identity are the essential traits of our daily lives (Gerhardt,1979 etal).

Prolonged diseases those that demand serious considerations give threat to integration of the way you view yourself and your body and it vigour’s certain changes with your identity (Straus, 1975). Once the prolonged disease start affecting an individual and he/she start to distress about it, it might affect him/her emotionally, physically and psychologically and this can cause integration of the body and the way they view themselves to become critically diminished and this divergence will affect your personality too(Straus,1975 etal). And this can lead to enduring task which demand continuing habituation or adaptation of everyday situations, because a person right now has to familiarize herself or himself to those changes which primarily refer to changing the manner in which they view their life such that they can lodge to their new body, while they are working on missing integration among the self and the body.

This too imply fighting with quite opposed to infection. Lack medicinal information and less helpful relations like family, friends and the society tangle the reconstruction of self and identity, thus this could lead to the onset of serious disease (Davis, 1963). Prolonged disease generates severe pain in reaction to the damages it inflicts on their lives (Straus, 1975 etal). Examples like financial disasters, household strains and stigma are one of the penalties that have an effect on the influenced person which might cause them to lose their self-esteem or confidence and this won’t affect their self-esteem only but even their identity (Goffman, 1968).

People perceive illness in different ways, where symptoms and disturbance to the physical and societal habits will occur, even the way you behave when viewing yourself will take new path (Kelly and Field). It is argued that the appearance of disease can be the one influencing the person’s identity and change of self. Even though it can be invisible to all it can also be close to others, an example can be the diabetes disease. Thus it can cause identity to persist the same. Though the person’s sense of self will be complicated when coming into the action appointed to controlling the illness with respect to bodily actions like testing and diet control.

In contrast most people who had harder time in coping with the disease are the ones whose conditions are visible and cannot be concealed such as of the ones on the wheelchair. Thus sudden change in identity is expected to those kind of people. Another effect on their view of identity might be the hospitality that they receive from others (Bury M.R, 1979). Another opinion mentioned by Bury was that the sense of insecurity in the experience of the illness is broadly acknowledged (David 1960, Weiner 1975). Furthermore he mentioned that the means to show resentment is caused by absence of acceptance and this can cause resentment revolved in a way of depression (Zola 1982). He added that having entree to medicinal awareness is of supreme significance specifically in the incident of prolonged illness as it bargains a chance to visualize mentally the disease and distinct it from the individual (Rose, 1976).

In conclusion, it is only when this individuals try to settle to their self-illness, they begin to admit that their body and then their life has changed and that they have to accept and familiarize to those changes. At some point some people not once adjust and admit to their sickness whereas others might reject to disclose that they have grieved damages, however some agree and adjust to their shifting physiques only long after grieving damages. Familiarizing to a diminished body imply solving the strain among the body and self-provoked by severe prolonged illness. Thus effective adjustment imply living with disease short of living exclusively for it.