Therapeutic Explanations

understanding in medicine, explanatory models, persistant physical symptoms, complex chronic conditions, patients as knowledge partners, digital health information ecosystem

Explanations of bodily symptoms play a central role in how patients understand, manage, and recover from illness. This thesis addresses a persistent challenge in contemporary healthcare: how to explain symptoms that are not directly attributable to structural disease or injury. Such symptoms, here conceptualised under the umbrella term Functional Somatic Symptoms (FSS), are common and often associated with distress, disability, and difficulties navigating healthcare systems. Despite their prevalence, individuals with FSS frequently encounter diagnostic uncertainty, stigma, and fragmented care. Online information increasingly shapes health beliefs, a lack of accessible, evidence-based explanations for FSS, combined with algorithmic biases toward alarming content, contributes to an information gap that may exacerbate anxiety and hinder recovery. This thesis therefore focuses on the possibility for therapeutic explanations within the current socio-technological landscape: explanations that support constructive sense-making and guide effective symptom management. It advances the concept of therapeutic explanation as a framework for understanding how individuals make sense of persistent symptoms, and how such explanations can restore meaning, support embodied understanding, and expand possibilities for shared understanding and symptom mastery.

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