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Painful languages of the body: experiences of headache among women in two peruvian communities

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Abstract

This exploratory study focuses on the understandings of and experiences with headache in two settings in Peru: the Quechua-speaking district of Ayacucho, in southern Peru, and a poor urban district of Lima Metropolitana. More specifically, it explores the personal and collective meanings constructed around women’s headache experiences. Structured and open-ended interviews were administered to patients suffering headache to elicit interpretations of headache episodes. An analysis of the collected narratives suggests that headache is often comprehended in a polysemic framework, where meanings ascribed in bodily, emotional, family, and social terms articulate individual and shared notions of suffering within larger contexts of social dislocation. Often woven into experiences of solitude, headache accounts are lived and told in dynamic temporal spaces, and narrate dissolution of family ties and tensions associated with women’s roles. The results underscore the significance of patients’ subjective interpretations of painful experiences and underscore the connections between bodily and emotional pain and distress experienced at family, community, and larger social levels.

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Acknowledgments

This research was sponsored by the McGill University–Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia UPCD Tier 2 Linkage Project “Mental Health and Human Development” and funded by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) through the Association of Universities and Colleges of Canada (AUCC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Clinical Psychology, Boston University, 648 Beacon Street, 2nd floor, Boston, MA, 02215, USA

    Sarah Darghouth

  2. Douglas Hospital Research Centre, McGill University, 6875 LaSalle Boulevard Montreal, Quebec, H4H 1R3, Canada

    Duncan Pedersen

  3. Département d’Anthropologie, Université de Montréal, Pavillon Lionel-Groulx, 3150 rue Jean-Brillant Montréal, Quebec, H3T 1N8, Canada

    Gilles Bibeau

  4. Montreal Children’s Hospital, McGill University, 4018 St. Catherine W. Montreal, Quebec, H3Z 1P2, Canada

    Cecile Rousseau

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  1. Sarah Darghouth
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  4. Cecile Rousseau
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Correspondence to Sarah Darghouth.

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Darghouth, S., Pedersen, D., Bibeau, G. et al. Painful languages of the body: experiences of headache among women in two peruvian communities. Cult Med Psychiatry 30, 271–297 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-006-9021-3

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