IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v198y2018icp53-60.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Imagined futures in living with multiple conditions: Positivity, relationality and hopelessness

Author

Listed:
  • Coyle, Lindsay-Ann
  • Atkinson, Sarah

Abstract

Hope serves as an overarching concept for a range of engagements that demonstrate the benefits of a positive outlook for coping with chronic conditions of ill-health and disability. A dominant engagement through medicine has positioned hope as a desirable attribute and its opposite, hopelessness, as pathological. In this engagement hope is individual, internally located and largely cognitive and able to be learned. Attaining hope reflects a process of coming to terms with the losses associated with long-term conditions and of imagining new meanings and purposes for the future ahead. This process is characterised by a set of linear temporal stages, from loss and denial to acceptance and reappraising the life-course, by an emphasis on the morally desirable exercise of self-care and by a desired outcome that, in the absence of cure, is hope. Through interviews, we aim to unsettle the privileged status given to a positive outlook through examining the expressions, contexts and negotiations of hopelessness of people living with multiple conditions of ill-health and/or disability. These narratives of hopelessness disclose the ways in which realistic imagined possibilities for the future are constrained by external structures of time and function that demand complex negotiations with places, bodies and other people. As a situated and relational narrative, hopelessness draws our attention to the need to rebalance the exclusive attention to individual, internal resources with a renewed attention to contexts and settings. Moreover, hopelessness can be generative for those living with multiple conditions in shaping alternatively framed priorities with respect to their temporal and interpersonal relations.

Suggested Citation

  • Coyle, Lindsay-Ann & Atkinson, Sarah, 2018. "Imagined futures in living with multiple conditions: Positivity, relationality and hopelessness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 198(C), pages 53-60.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:198:y:2018:i:c:p:53-60
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.022
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953617307529
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2017.12.022?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Smith, Brett & Sparkes, Andrew C., 2005. "Men, sport, spinal cord injury, and narratives of hope," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(5), pages 1095-1105, September.
    2. Eliott, Jaklin A. & Olver, Ian N., 2007. "Hope and hoping in the talk of dying cancer patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 138-149, January.
    3. Ezzy, Douglas, 2000. "Illness narratives: time, hope and HIV," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 50(5), pages 605-617, March.
    4. Henwood, Flis & Harris, Roma & Spoel, Philippa, 2011. "Informing health? Negotiating the logics of choice and care in everyday practices of 'healthy living'," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 72(12), pages 2026-2032, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Visser, Anja & de Jager Meezenbroek, Eltica C. & Garssen, Bert, 2018. "Does spirituality reduce the impact of somatic symptoms on distress in cancer patients? Cross-sectional and longitudinal findings," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 214(C), pages 57-66.
    2. Ruth Mächler & Noemi Sturm & Eckhard Frick & Friederike Schalhorn & Regina Stolz & Jan Valentini & Johannes Krisam & Cornelia Straßner, 2022. "Evaluation of a Spiritual History with Elderly Multi-Morbid Patients in General Practice—A Mixed-Methods Study within the Project HoPES3," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(1), pages 1-15, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rhodes, Tim & Bernays, Sarah & Terzic, Katarina Jankovic, 2009. "Medical promise and the recalibration of expectation: Hope and HIV treatment engagement in a transitional setting," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 68(6), pages 1050-1059, March.
    2. Perrotta, Manuela & Hamper, Josie, 2021. "The crafting of hope: Contextualising add-ons in the treatment trajectories of IVF patients," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 287(C).
    3. Laura E. Jacobson, 2020. "President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) Policy Process and the Conversation around HIV/AIDS in the United States," Journal of Development Policy and Practice, , vol. 5(2), pages 149-166, July.
    4. Agata Goraczko & Grzegorz Zurek & Maciej Lachowicz & Katarzyna Kujawa & Wiesław Blach & Alina Zurek, 2020. "Quality of Life after Spinal Cord Injury: A Multiple Case Study Examination of Elite Athletes," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 17(20), pages 1-10, October.
    5. Will, Catherine M. & Henwood, Flis & Weiner, Kate & Williams, Rosalind, 2020. "Negotiating the practical ethics of ‘self-tracking’ in intimate relationships: Looking for care in healthy living," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 266(C).
    6. Andrew Howell & Thomas Bailie & Karen Buro, 2015. "Evidence for Vicarious Hope and Vicarious Gratitude," Journal of Happiness Studies, Springer, vol. 16(3), pages 687-704, June.
    7. Jamie Albright & Cynthia D. Fair, 2018. "“Now I Know I Love Me†: The Trajectory to Self-Acceptance Among HIV Positive Adults in a Southeastern U.S. Community Center," SAGE Open, , vol. 8(3), pages 21582440188, October.
    8. Pierret, Janine, 2007. "An analysis over time (1990-2000) of the experiences of living with HIV," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(8), pages 1595-1605, October.
    9. Maitlis, Sally, 2022. "Rupture and reclamation in the life story: The role of early relationships in self-narratives following a forced career transition," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 169(C).
    10. Beard, Renée L. & Fox, Patrick J., 2008. "Resisting social disenfranchisement: Negotiating collective identities and everyday life with memory loss," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(7), pages 1509-1520, April.
    11. Sanders, Caroline & Rogers, Anne & Gately, Claire & Kennedy, Anne, 2008. "Planning for end of life care within lay-led chronic illness self-management training: The significance of 'death awareness' and biographical context in participant accounts," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(4), pages 982-993, February.
    12. Hicks, Alison, 2022. "The missing link: Towards an integrated health and information literacy research agenda," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 292(C).
    13. Paul Atkinson, 2009. "Illness Narratives Revisited: The Failure of Narrative Reductionism," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 14(5), pages 196-205, November.
    14. Adler, Matthew D. & Dolan, Paul & Henwood, Amanda & Kavetsos, Georgios, 2022. "“Better the devil you know”: Are stated preferences over health and happiness determined by how healthy and happy people are?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 303(C).
    15. Corbett, Mandy & Foster, Nadine E. & Ong, Bie Nio, 2007. "Living with low back pain--Stories of hope and despair," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(8), pages 1584-1594, October.
    16. Grzegorz Zurek & Agata Goraczko & Alina Żurek & Maciej Lachowicz & Katarzyna Kujawa, 2022. "Restored Life of Elite Athletes after Spinal Cord Injury," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(14), pages 1-13, July.
    17. Marent, Benjamin & Henwood, Flis & Darking, Mary, 2018. "Ambivalence in digital health: Co-designing an mHealth platform for HIV care," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 215(C), pages 133-141.
    18. Smith, Brett & Sparkes, Andrew C., 2005. "Men, sport, spinal cord injury, and narratives of hope," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 61(5), pages 1095-1105, September.
    19. Pi-Hua Chang & Ching-Rong Lin & Yun-Hsiang Lee & Yi-Lin Liu & Gee-Chen Chang & Aasha I Hoogland & Yeur-Hur Lai, 2020. "Exercise experiences in patients with metastatic lung cancer: A qualitative approach," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(4), pages 1-15, April.
    20. Kirby, Emma & Broom, Alex & MacArtney, John & Lewis, Sophie & Good, Phillip, 2021. "Hopeful dying? The meanings and practice of hope in palliative care family meetings," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 291(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:198:y:2018:i:c:p:53-60. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.