“Looking for relief”: narratives of biomedical professionals and patients about experiences, perceptions and (dis) agreements about other care practices in chronic headaches

Abstract

From the Social Sciences, this article contributes to the knowledge of a chronic headaches biomedical categorize as “migraine”. In particular, I analyze the narratives of medical neurologists and people who suffer these headaches about a set of different care practices. For this purpose the study connects the notion of care and chronicity with different senses, experiences and knowledge that patients and professionals give to this practices.
Migraine is a kind of headache that has not certain answers about its origins and treatments from biomedicine so there are other practices –formal and informal- that patient add to their treatment.
The methodological perspective is inscribed in the domains of social sciences, following the alignments of qualitative investigation and, specifically, the analysis of the narrative. The field work consisted, in interviews in depth to people with headaches and neurologist in a hospital in the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. In second place, through the snowball technique, interviews were made to other people with migraines and close ties outside the institution.