Narratief-pastorale terapie met hartpasiënte

Abstract

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is a life-threatening disease. When heart patients in the treatment of their disease, due to certain subjugating discourses practised by the biomedical model or biomedicine, are treated in a way that contributes to their anxiety and they feel themselves marginalised by society, then CAD becomes even more threatening. The narrative-pastoral approach of this study aims to treat heart patients in a way that has a calming effect on them that could assist them to deal with their heart disease more efficiently. This study shows how a heart patient's illness stories can be centralised by means of narrative therapy and how a pastoral and ethical attitude of love and respect can produce a climate that's conducive to better health and well-being.

I indicate how my methodology of participatory action research succeeds in making the heart patients active participants to the research project. Their active participation indicates that meaning is not created on their behalf in therapy; rather, they are responsible for the process of richer construction of meaning. I describe how the participants socially co-constructed alternative and richer descriptions of their illness. Futhermore, I point out how their richer descriptions of illness contribute to perceptible and measurable results that are of value to the heart patients.