Seeking Pain Relief Outside of the Scope of Normative Medicine: Theoretical Perspectives Revisited

• In Event: 366 - Open Refereed Roundtable Session II
  In Refereed Roundtable: B. Table 22. Medical/Health I

Abstract

This mixed methods study on treatment-seeking aims to illuminate how people make the choice for complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and explores the question of how interaction with an unconventional system of medicine influences patients’ capacities to manage their chronic pain. The study, based on both quantitative and qualitative data collected from people experiencing chronic pain, seeks to advance the literature on illness by bringing to the fore notions of deviance and marginality in the experience of chronic pain as well as CAM use in the United States today and addressing how chronic pain patients using CAM fit, or do not fit, into the influential theories of illness narrative, sick role and medicalization. In connecting with and revising these major theoretical perspectives, this research can make visible the vast number of people who struggle for legitimacy while experiencing chronic pain conditions.

Author

• Misty Amadona Curreli, Suffolk Community College