Living Close to the Edge

Maria Wiklund,Eva-Britt Malmgren-Olsson,Carita Bengs,Ann Öhman

doi:10.1177/2158244014537083

Abstract

Although self-reported stress-related problems are common among Swedish adolescent girls and young women, few qualitative studies have been carried out of young people’s own understandings and descriptions of their lived embodied experiences of stress-related illness. The aim of the present study, therefore, was to explore and analyze the lived embodied experiences of stress among adolescent girls and young women who had sought help at a youth health center. Interviews with 40 girls and young women aged 16 to 25 were analyzed with qualitative content analysis. “Living close to the edge” was interpreted as the common theme running through all of the interviews and representing the participants’ sometimes unbearable situations. The theme contains embodied dimensions of physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and existential distress, as well as dimensions of distrust and disempowerment. The findings highlight the importance of addressing these dimensions in youth health interventions, and the importance of contextualizing young women’s distress is emphasized. These young women’s experiences of stress and illness were multifaceted, which place high demands on health facilities and intervention programs. It is important to integrate context- and gender-sensitive models and approaches in youth health as well as in primary care settings.

Highlights

In this article, we explore dimensions of lived embodied experiences of distress, with a focus on stress, in a group of Northern Swedish adolescent girls and young women who had sought help for stress-related problems at a youth health center
We have explored the lived embodied multidimensional experiences of stress, and of “living close to the edge,” as narrated by Northern Swedish adolescent girls and young women
These physical, emotional, cognitive, social, and existential dimensions are viewed as empirical examples of gendered and social embodiment, and illustrate the complex gendered biopsychosocial processes where external structuring conditions merge with internal body-anchored responses and experiences

Summary

Introduction

We explore dimensions of lived embodied experiences of distress, with a focus on stress, in a group of Northern Swedish adolescent girls and young women who had sought help for stress-related problems at a youth health center. We view the phenomenon of young women’s experiences of stress and high demands as an empirical example of what Connell (2012) calls social and gendered embodiment. We view stress-related ill health as developing in close interaction between the individual and contextual conditions. The focus of our analysis is the young women’s own narrations of such complex reciprocal processes where external social and gendered conditions merge with internal bodyanchored responses and experiences, with our main focus on the individual and internal aspects. External stressors and societal discourses have been in focus in previous publications (Wiklund, Bengs, Malmgren-Olsson, & Öhman, 2010; Wiklund, Malmgren-Olsson, Bengs, & Öhman, 2010).

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Discussion

Conclusion