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Disease, Illness and Sickness
Disease, illness and sickness. Are these different words for the same thing? More than 25 years ago, anthropologist Allan Young said no and explained the differences. His work never received the attention it deserved. While disease is inevitable, illness and sickness are not and actually impede the healing process.
"Disease" is the organic pathology that afflicts us: ie. diabetes, arthritis, infection, senile dementia, cancer. "Illness" is how one responds to one's disease. Disease becomes an illness when one becomes obsessed with one's disease. "Illness" is very difficult to overcome.
"Sickness" is society's response to disease. The simplest example is society's initial response to AIDS 25 years ago. Then, a person with AIDS was a leper. Today we see "sickness" in many people who are dying. Close friends often don't visit the dying because they "don't know what to say" or "how to act." They isolate the dying from society, causing sickness in the dying.
I'm a breast cancer survivor. My disease was breast cancer. I had just moved to a new town and had no community. I became "ill" because I was lonely and depressed. I became "sick" because old friends, through their comments, blamed me for being the cause of my disease. If I'd had a supportive community and not become ill or sick, healing from my disease would have taken less time.
By
Anne Brower
|
March 6, 2009; 3:39 PM ET
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Posted by: coloradodog | March 16, 2009 9:33 AM
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There's an interesting difference in Spanish and English how people indicate they are sick. In Spanish, they use a verb form of "estar" which is a temporary condition(estoy enfermo) In English (lacking a form of "to be" for temporary conditions), we say "I am sick" with the verb "am" describing who we are - like I'm a cancer victim instead of I have (temporarily) cancer. If we regard sickness as an unnatural, temporary condition instead of defining ourselves as our sickness, we have a better chance of overcoming the temporary, unnatural condition. Unfortunately, in Western societies, doctors often terminally define us as sick and prescribe medicines to treat the symptoms indefinitely.