Illness experiences are imbued with emotions for those receiving care, those giving care and those bearing witness. Emotions, and how we conceptualise them, are also implicated in the social divisions (such as gender, class, and race) that characterise work within the healthcare professions. This Research Topic explores these intersections across the sociologies of health and emotions: how emotions and emotional discourses shape social relations and health outcomes.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing economic constraints, the geopolitical sequelae of climate change and war, healthcare work has seemingly never been more emotionally demanding, with implications both for patient care and carer wellbeing, whether formal or informal. Similarly, patients might experience embodied symptomatology and affective entanglements in new ways. With a rise in mental health concerns, the interplay of emotions, social conditions and interactions demand renewed attention. How are emotions in the context of health and healthcare felt, managed, transformed, and/or transformative?
In this Research Topic, we invite theory driven papers across the whole methodological spectrum to foreground the conceptualisations and multi-layered role of emotion and affect which underpin relations that define health care experiences and its delivery in contemporary global societies. Example themes might include some of the following, but this is not an exhaustive list:
• Emotional dimensions and diagnoses of illness experiences
• Health outcomes and their relationship to emotions
• Pain, emotions, and health issues (such as opioid addiction, cancer, etc.)
• Risk, emotions, and COVID-19
• Mental health and emotions
• Climate emotions and health
• Gendered aspects of illness experiences and emotions
• Intersections of race, class, and gender and illness experiences/emotions
• Affect and emotion in patient advocacy groups or health social movements
• Healthcare practices and emotion management
• Emotion and healthcare worker collective action
• Media representations of emotions in healthcare
• Digitalization, health, and emotions
• Emotions and decision-making surrounding end-of-life care
• Organizational factors that impact healthcare worker's emotions
• Role of emotions in recovery, healing, therapy, and treatments
Illness experiences are imbued with emotions for those receiving care, those giving care and those bearing witness. Emotions, and how we conceptualise them, are also implicated in the social divisions (such as gender, class, and race) that characterise work within the healthcare professions. This Research Topic explores these intersections across the sociologies of health and emotions: how emotions and emotional discourses shape social relations and health outcomes.
In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, ongoing economic constraints, the geopolitical sequelae of climate change and war, healthcare work has seemingly never been more emotionally demanding, with implications both for patient care and carer wellbeing, whether formal or informal. Similarly, patients might experience embodied symptomatology and affective entanglements in new ways. With a rise in mental health concerns, the interplay of emotions, social conditions and interactions demand renewed attention. How are emotions in the context of health and healthcare felt, managed, transformed, and/or transformative?
In this Research Topic, we invite theory driven papers across the whole methodological spectrum to foreground the conceptualisations and multi-layered role of emotion and affect which underpin relations that define health care experiences and its delivery in contemporary global societies. Example themes might include some of the following, but this is not an exhaustive list:
• Emotional dimensions and diagnoses of illness experiences
• Health outcomes and their relationship to emotions
• Pain, emotions, and health issues (such as opioid addiction, cancer, etc.)
• Risk, emotions, and COVID-19
• Mental health and emotions
• Climate emotions and health
• Gendered aspects of illness experiences and emotions
• Intersections of race, class, and gender and illness experiences/emotions
• Affect and emotion in patient advocacy groups or health social movements
• Healthcare practices and emotion management
• Emotion and healthcare worker collective action
• Media representations of emotions in healthcare
• Digitalization, health, and emotions
• Emotions and decision-making surrounding end-of-life care
• Organizational factors that impact healthcare worker's emotions
• Role of emotions in recovery, healing, therapy, and treatments
