Mental distress: Strategies of sense-making

The irruption of severe mental distress into the life of an individual determines a deep biographical disruption. To cope with this crisis, individuals are involved in a laborious sense-making activity, through the composition of narratives intended to create a new link between past, present and future. This essay analyses the sense-making strategies that follow this dramatic experience through the comparison of four illness narratives composed by Italian participants. The narratives are selected from a broader textual corpus in a way that authorizes their connotation as ‘flesh and blood’ ideal types. These narratives illustrate three kinds of explanation for the outset of mental distress: the biomedical adopted by Vito; the spiritual-religious adopted by Marta; and the psycho-social adopted by Giacomo. Vito, Marta and Giacomo are still inside the story they are telling, and compose the events by observing them through the eyes of a patient, qualifying their diversity as a stigma. The fourth narrative is different, composed by Serena, a ‘voices hearer’ who comes to terms with her voices not by silencing them with drugs, but by accepting them as a charisma that has transformed her into a medium and, on final analysis, a balanced woman.