Experiential Approach
Van Gogh's "At Eternity's Gate"
The Experiential approach takes a look at how a person describes their illness and what it means to that person to be ill, based on their biological, psychological, and social problems. To put this approach into much simpler words one could say it’s an analysis of a person’s subjective story about their illness, known as one’s illness narrative. These stories give the anthropologist a good understanding of the connection between the individual and the affecting illness. Depression narratives can be both beneficial from the story tellers point of view and also from a listers point of view as you will see throughout this page.
I found a youtube video titled “Depression & Anxiety: My Story.” which is a self narrated story told from a girl (name was not given) who suffers from, as said in the title, depression and anxiety. She mentioned at the beginning that “this story will be tough for her to tell and she might get a little emotional during”, as expected when someone’s telling such a dramatic story. Getting into it, she explained she had always suffered from anxiety and panic attacks, but never received any treatment for it. She recalls in 5th grade having her first panic attack. The problem kept getting worse and worse for her though, just putting up with it from day to day. She had mentioned things started to get very bad her senior year in high school when her brother received a kidney transplant and the hardship that came along with that. Symptoms of depression were really starting to set in, she had been sleeping a lot and even faked sleeping just to skip out on school many times to avoid the everyday stresses that came with it. She could no longer live a regular everyday life which really took its toll on her, and eventually led her to attempted suicide because she couldn’t handle it any more. As sad as it is to say, people who let their depression play on without treatment suicide becomes, unfortunately, very common.
The failed attempt turned out to be the lowest point of her story as she goes on to describe, that’s when she started getting help. Drug intervention and psychiatry were her clinically prescribed treatments, which helped very much and yet she still admits to having “bad days” but now she “can look past them and know that tomorrow will be a better new day”. She definitely has a positive attitude now and throughout her story she encourages listeners to get help if they are going through the same thing, saying “there’s help out there don’t let depression get the best of you, you’re better than that”.
Out of the three different narrative paths (Restitution, Chaos, and Quest), I’d say personally the story was told from a chaos narrative. The reason being is that her story was very dark at the beginning and couldn’t even see what was happening to her as far as her depression went. She ended up getting help, but ultimately it helped her accept her anxiety which was the initial trigger to her onset depression. She admits to having bad days still which shows that her problem could be considered chronic, but her reaction has a more positive result, thinking about how the next day will be better. While watching this video it was very apparent that her story was a big struggle but at the end she ultimately got help and encourages others to do the exact same thing.
I found a youtube video titled “Depression & Anxiety: My Story.” which is a self narrated story told from a girl (name was not given) who suffers from, as said in the title, depression and anxiety. She mentioned at the beginning that “this story will be tough for her to tell and she might get a little emotional during”, as expected when someone’s telling such a dramatic story. Getting into it, she explained she had always suffered from anxiety and panic attacks, but never received any treatment for it. She recalls in 5th grade having her first panic attack. The problem kept getting worse and worse for her though, just putting up with it from day to day. She had mentioned things started to get very bad her senior year in high school when her brother received a kidney transplant and the hardship that came along with that. Symptoms of depression were really starting to set in, she had been sleeping a lot and even faked sleeping just to skip out on school many times to avoid the everyday stresses that came with it. She could no longer live a regular everyday life which really took its toll on her, and eventually led her to attempted suicide because she couldn’t handle it any more. As sad as it is to say, people who let their depression play on without treatment suicide becomes, unfortunately, very common.
The failed attempt turned out to be the lowest point of her story as she goes on to describe, that’s when she started getting help. Drug intervention and psychiatry were her clinically prescribed treatments, which helped very much and yet she still admits to having “bad days” but now she “can look past them and know that tomorrow will be a better new day”. She definitely has a positive attitude now and throughout her story she encourages listeners to get help if they are going through the same thing, saying “there’s help out there don’t let depression get the best of you, you’re better than that”.
Out of the three different narrative paths (Restitution, Chaos, and Quest), I’d say personally the story was told from a chaos narrative. The reason being is that her story was very dark at the beginning and couldn’t even see what was happening to her as far as her depression went. She ended up getting help, but ultimately it helped her accept her anxiety which was the initial trigger to her onset depression. She admits to having bad days still which shows that her problem could be considered chronic, but her reaction has a more positive result, thinking about how the next day will be better. While watching this video it was very apparent that her story was a big struggle but at the end she ultimately got help and encourages others to do the exact same thing.
Bibliography:
Van Gogh, Vincent. "At Eternity's Gate." Accessed August 14, 2013. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_002.jpg.
Woodwinkedx. "Depression & Anxiety: My Story." YouTube. n.d. Accessed August 14, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbctgT7cCqw.
Van Gogh, Vincent. "At Eternity's Gate." Accessed August 14, 2013. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_002.jpg.
Woodwinkedx. "Depression & Anxiety: My Story." YouTube. n.d. Accessed August 14, 2013. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbctgT7cCqw.