5th October 2017: migraines, medically unexplained symptoms and when a picture could be worth a thousand words

Coincidentally, or perhaps not, this week’s paper continued our motif around “drawing”. Rutberg and Öhrling’s (2012) paper sought to explore the meaning of women’s experience of living with migraines. Within an interview setting, individuals were asked to draw pictures illustrating what living with migraines “is like”. Drawings were included as method of furthering talk, seemingly once topics of discussion been “exhausted”.

Following last session’s presentation from Dr Zoë Boden, inevitably we found ourselves comparing and contrasting the differing approaches of including drawings within phenomenological research. Here, and almost echoing back to our reaction to Lian and Lorem’s (2017) paper, we felt as though the drawings could have been incorporated in a more meaningful way. One drawing was included within the paper, but left to “speak for itself”; used as an example of the type of picture produced, with their “enriching” quality defined in terms of provoking further spoken discussion. When compared to Dr Boden’s work, in which the drawings truly became the data, the “richness” fully explored through interpretation of their metaphorical quality, we wondered what a greater inclusion of migraine representations could have looked like (literally and figuratively!). The question of “consensus” within phenomenological data was also explored, a concept that can seem at odds with an idiographic commitment.

Our discussions were further framed by a PHaR member’s PhD, which will be looking at male experiences of migraines; similarly to Rutberg and Öhrling (2012), utilising upon the hermeneutic phenomenology of van Manen (1997). We discussed the impact of a diagnosis of “migraine” in relation to participant inclusion. All of Rutberg and Öhrling’s (2012) participants had received a formal diagnosis. We wondered how the experiences of those self-diagnosed, due to their perceived impact, may differ than those defined by external means (such as a diagnosis). Particularly, we felt that developing links between literature around “medically unexplained symptoms” and the themes derived from the “invisibleness” of migraines could be potentially illuminating. Building on the writing of Rutberg and Öhrling (2012) we envisaged a PhD which could potentially bridge between a descriptive (the “essence” of male migraines) and more interpretative phenomenological stance.

References

Lian, O. S., & Lorem, G. F. (2017). “I do not really belong out there anymore” Sense of being and belonging among people with medically unexplained long-term fatigue. Qualitative health research, 27(4), 474-486.

Rutberg, S., & Öhrling, K. (2012). Migraine–more than a headache: women’s experiences of living with migraine. Disability and rehabilitation, 34(4), 329-336.

van Manen M. (1997). Researching lived experience: Human science for an action sensitive pedagogy. (2^nd ed). Ontario: Althouse Press.