1st Edition
Coping with Chronic Illness Theories, Issues and Lived Experiences
Table of contents
Preface for this edition
Why this book
Part I
1. Healthy and ill: equal and different 2. Beyond the myth of perfect health
3. Protagonist of one’s own development
4. Protagonist of one’s own development in chronic disease
Part II
5. Why me?
6. Finding meaning
7. Reconstructing identity
8. Self-efficacy: the exercise of control
9. Stress
10. Coping with stress
Part III
11. It is all your fault
12. Pain
13. Fatigue
14. Depression
15. Mourning and loss
16. Optimism and happiness
17. Logical thought magical thought
18. Telling the story of one’s illness
Part IV
19. The therapeutic relationship
20. Trust
21. Empathy
22. The patient between statistical logic and clinical logic
23. Alternative medicine
24. Confidentiality
Part V
25. Us and the others
26. Between visible and invisible
27. Solitude
28. Attachments
29. Work
30. Life and death
Part VI
31. Diagnosis: confronting the truth
32. "I want to do it on my own"
33. Being ill in the Internet age
34. And life goes on
35. Parents and children
Bibliography
Biography
Silvia Bonino is Professor Emeritus of Developmental Psychology in the Department of Psychology of the University of Turin (Italy), where she founded the Laboratory of Developmental Psychology. She is the author of Nature and Culture in Intimate Partner Violence: Sex, Love and Equality, (Routledge, 2018).
This book brings a new vision into the experience of living with chronic disease. Silvia Bonino had the courage and intelligence to put her knowledge as professor of developmental psychology in dialogue with her personal experience to produce a very fine and sensitive description of the processes, emotions, states of mind, strategies and mechanisms of defence of the chronic patient. It offers both a critical and constructive look at the intervention of different health personnel, highlighting the need for better communication between professionals and patients. An indispensable book for both caregivers and chronically ill!
Michel Born, Professor, University of Liège, Belgium






