The experience of chronic illness and psychoptathology across life stories : the case of haemophilic boys and depressive hospitalized adolescents

The aim of this study is to examine and compare how hemophilic adolescents and depressive hospitalized adolescents tell their own stories, how they build their identities in spite of the treatment constraints and how they involve themselves in different relationships.
During an individual semi-structured interview, based on Mc Adams’ works, each teenager’s narrative was collected. Various measurements were taken. The discursive analysis and software were used to analyze the data base.
First results show hemophilic boys speak about their disease spontaneously but they don’t identify only to it while depressive hospitalized adolescents define themselves exclusively by their mental disorder. Another report is that, opposed to depressive hospitalized adolescents, hemophilic boys invest hobbies, relationships with peers’ as much as non depressive adolescents even if those can feel different and sometimes restrained.