The Deserving Patient: Blame, Dependency, and Impairment in Discourses of Chronic Pain and Opioid Use
Year: 2016
Type: article
Abstract: Negative stereotypes about people with chronic pain pose a barrier in the delivery of care; contribute to worsening symptoms of physical and psychological distress; and play a role in policy decisions that adversely affect patients and providers.Pain-care seekers may be accused of malingering, laziness, mental aberration, attention seeking, and drug seeking.The propagation of stigmatizing attitudes was explored in this Critical Discourse Analysis of online-reader-comments responding to a series of pain-care policy articles published by a large metropolitan newspaper.Results suggest that framing pain patients as legitimate and deserving can inadvertently reproduce the inequities advocates seek to redress.Ascriptions of deservingness were associated with the locus of choice and agency.Assignments of blameworthiness were used to distinguish the legitimate pain patient from the illegitimate care seeker.Motivation for seeking pain care, as much as the effects of opioids, provided crucial determinants in evaluating legitimacy claims and blame ascriptions.Evaluations of deservingness were predicated on the valence of social regard.Compassion, empathy, respect and believability were rewards of positive social regard.The subjects of addiction and drug abuse were maligned to the detriment of people with pain and people with opioid addiction alike.The disease-entity model of
Author: Maureen Nickerson
Institution: Antioch University
Language: English
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2549993480