ArticleTheoretical medicine and bioethics2017
Diagnosis, narrative identity, and asymptomatic disease.
Article in Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- [The precautionary principle in preventive actions: considerations on an absence].Cadernos de saude publica · 2026Article
- Finding Consensus on Trust in AI in Health Care: Recommendations From a Panel of International Experts.Journal of medical Internet research · 2025Article
- The experiences and psychological impact of living with premenstrual disorders: a systematic review and thematic synthesis.Frontiers in psychiatry · 2024Review
- Investigating the feasibility and ethical implications of phenotypic screening using stem cell-derived tissue models to detect and manage disease.Stem cell reports · 2022Review
- Consequences of health condition labelling: protocol for a systematic scoping review.BMJ open · 2020Article
- Understanding kidney disease in rural central Uganda - Findings from a qualitative study.Global public health · 2020Article
- Analysing the ethics of breast cancer overdiagnosis: a pathogenic vulnerability.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2019Article
- How medical technologies shape the experience of illness.Life sciences, society and policy · 2018Article
- Understanding disease and illness.Theoretical medicine and bioethics · 2017Article
- Defining disease in the context of overdiagnosis.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2017Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
An increasing number of patients receive diagnoses of disease without having any symptoms. These include diseases detected through screening programs, as incidental findings from unrelated investigations, or via routine checks of various biological variables like blood pressure or cholesterol. In this article, we draw on narrative identity theory to examine how the process of making sense of being diagnosed with asymptomatic disease can trigger certain overlooked forms of harm for patients. We show that the experience of asymptomatic disease can involve 'mismatches' between one's beliefs about one's health status on the one hand, and bodily sensations or past experience on the other. Patients' attempts to integrate these diagnoses into their self-narratives often involve either forming inaccurate beliefs about bodily sensations and/or past experience, or coming to believe that feelings and experience do not necessarily track or predict health status, leading to an ongoing sense of vulnerability to ill health. These resulting alterations in self-understanding can sometimes be considered harmful, in view of their implications for ascriptions of responsibility and ongoing anxiety.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.