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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Berliners’ Models Of Heart Disease Causation, Mary Fechner Dec 2010

Berliners’ Models Of Heart Disease Causation, Mary Fechner

Mary Fechner

Following the collapse of socialism and subsequent German reunification, cardiac mortality rose unexpectedly in the former East Germany; although rates improved by mid-decade, a West/East health gradient persisted. Psychosocial stress from regime change, postsocialism, was one hypothesis proposed to explain the health transition. Absent from the scholarly conversation were individuals’ own assessments of their illness experiences in this time of social upheaval. I hypothesized that such data might illuminate processes linking illness and social change. I analyzed illness narratives of East and West Berliners with heart disease, attending to subjective notions of causation. Both groups cited nonmodifiable and modifiable risk …


Culture And Co-Morbidity In East And West Berliners, Mary Fechner Dec 2009

Culture And Co-Morbidity In East And West Berliners, Mary Fechner

Mary Fechner

Following the collapse of socialism, fluctuations in cardiac mortality rates in East Germany and a West-to-East cardiac health gradient became topics of interest. Researchers suggested possible causes for these phenomena, including stress from postsocialism. I proposed that a cultural investigation of heart disease comorbid with depression could inform our understanding of the potential health effects of the postsocialist transition. I conducted ethnographic and survey research. In the study described here, I administered a depression scale (CES-D) and an ethnographically derived measure of cultural stress (Good Life Survey) to over 200 East and West Berliners with cardiovascular disease. Comparison of the …


A Change Of Heart: A Cultural Study Of Heart Disease And Depression In Post-Socialist Germany, Mary Fechner Dec 2003

A Change Of Heart: A Cultural Study Of Heart Disease And Depression In Post-Socialist Germany, Mary Fechner

Mary Fechner

No abstract provided.