ABSTRACT
Communicative methods or tactics to make the nature of illness and its implications understood. As frequent and integral a communicative practice as explaining illness is in health practitioner- patient interaction, relatively little is known about the most effective methods for explicating illness-related information. This state of affairs is problematic in that understanding the nature of one's illness is considered to be a vital component to reducing illness-related stress, increasing adherence to the medical regimen, and self-management. For instance, the use of figurative language is an intuitive and frequently employed illness explanation device. In addition to age, effective illness explanation strategies can vary as a result of culture. Storytelling among some peoples is a powerful method of interacting about illness, but less effective among other cultures. The following scenarios use diabetes as the health-related topic to exemplify many of the issues and variables to be considered in designing messages to explain illness.
