Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons^™

The Deserving Patient: Blame, Dependency, And Impairment In Discourses Of Chronic Pain And Opioid Use, Maureen Nickerson

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

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 …