Disruption and reconstruction: Narrative insights into the experience of family members caring for a relative diagnosed with serious mental illness

The findings of a study investigating carers' accounts about serious mental illness occurring in their family are presented. The narrative form is a p rimary means of ordering, structuring, and communicating illness experience s, reflecting some of the processes that carers intend to master and unders tand. Psychotic episodes entail a frightening disruption that forces carers to face fundamental existential, moral, and psychological issues because t hey call into question the continuity of lives and life-projects. This stud y has explored how carers articulate the consequences of a devastating expe rience and turn it into a meaningful event that can in some way be incorpor ated into the course of their life. Two types of narrative structure were i dentified. In stories of restitution or reparation, the experience of the e vent is transformed into phenomena having meaning, occupying a place in car ers: lives. In chaotic and frozen narratives, the illness remains a series of random events. The effects on coping of these two narrative types were e xplored, as well as gender-related themes and beliefs about mastery and con trol. Therapeutic implications are discussed and also possible connections to other research constructs (for example, Expressed Emotion). It is argued that the concept of illness must be approached from tr systemic, multidete rmined perspective that includes our narrative constructions.