Revealing Invisible Pain Through Art: Curating Empathy for Endometriosis
Date
2024-04-05
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Abstract
Sims et al. (2021) reviewed the disease burden of endometriosis, a painful and undertreated disease affecting 1 in 10 women and those AFAB worldwide. They found diagnosis and treatment may be delayed 7-11 years, often due to stigma or lack of empathy. Artistic images of internal pain can promote empathetic responses (Graywill, 2020) and can foster better communication between physicians and chronic pain patients (e.g., Padfield et al., 2010). Thus, we designed a mixed-methods study investigating whether endometriosis-related art and quotes can elicit empathetic responses in university students. Survey participants are randomly assigned to one of two groups and surveyed on state, trait, and aesthetic empathy. Both groups view art depicting pain, including quotes from patients: the experimental group views endometriosis-specific art, whereas the control group views general chronic pain art. Preliminary discourse analysis on responses to open-ended questions reveals that the endometriosis group garnered more empathetic responses overall, especially in cognitive and affective empathy, but the chronic pain group displayed more empathic concern than its counterpart. Our preliminary qualitative results support that empathy for endometriosis can be fostered through related art and quotes and merits further studies on this topic. Regarding our quantitative measures, we plan to conduct a Two-Way MANCOVA to test the effect of group assignment (endometriosis or general chronic pain art) and field of study (art, medical, or other) on two outcome variables––pre-post state empathy change and aesthetic empathy––while accounting for trait empathy.
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Tiffany B. Clements is a student at University of Texas at Tyler.
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Keywords
HUMANITIES and RELIGION::Aesthetic subjects::Art