Broken Heart Stories

Many Aboriginal communities call heart problems, and in particular cardiovascular disease, “White man’s sickness.” At the same time, Aboriginal women present with some of the highest rates of this disease. Against this backdrop, we explored how women with cardiac problems understand their heart heal...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Qualitative Health Research
Main Authors: Medved, Maria I., Brockmeier, Jens, Morach, Judy, Chartier-Courchene, Lori
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: SAGE Publications 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1049732313509407
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1049732313509407
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/1049732313509407
Description
Summary:Many Aboriginal communities call heart problems, and in particular cardiovascular disease, “White man’s sickness.” At the same time, Aboriginal women present with some of the highest rates of this disease. Against this backdrop, we explored how women with cardiac problems understand their heart health and used narrative-discursive methods to analyze interviews conducted with women from two First Nations in North America. The women told stories that were riddled with contradictions, unfolding a complicated personal and cultural reality of living with cardiovascular disease. In many stories, heart disease was described as resulting from a “community imbalance” in the wake of colonialism whereby the women had to take over the traditional roles of men. Their ideas of heart disease risk and healing flowed from this understanding. They derived a sense of strength, however, from their ability to undertake both gender roles. Based on our findings, we provide some recommendations for cardiac care.