There is a complex relationship between illness and identity. Missed and Dismissed Voices aims to expose the impact of hidden health problems on the daily lives of a growing number of adults who live with chronic conditions and repeatedly face the challenge of trying to maintain their personal sense of healthiness across the life course.

The book focuses on the meaning and management of both medically diagnosed chronic diseases and medically unexplained physical conditions or syndromes. In each case, people must decide whether to make their private suffering public. The book includes analysis derived from research literature, combined with illness narrative accounts of people in qualitative interviews and blog posts, to create fictional exemplary case studies for each of the chronic conditions examined. The common issues raised in these stories provide important insights into the process by which people manage to adapt to their changing health status and life circumstances. In this book, Alexander Segall, PhD, gives voice to chronically ill people who often have their life stories either missed or dismissed.