Everyday life, schizophrenia and narratives of illness experience

Introduction: This paper presents a narrative review of the literature on the everyday life of people diagnosed with the schizophrenia spectrum, from their narratives about the illness experience, published as articles in indexed journals. The narrative reviews start from broad issues with data sources and selection of articles that may contain some bias, seeking to develop a contextual and theoretical theme. Objective: The main objective is to indicate how narrative studies on the everyday life and experience of schizophrenia are presented in the national and international scenario; the most relevant authors; how the everyday life concept is described; type of studies performed and the possible contributions to the health/disease/care in mental health care process. Method: We sought the breadth of the researched material, appropriation, and organization of it. We reported the findings in quantitative terms on the subject to then present an overview of the selected papers. We aimed to know those who present the everyday life experienced by people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Results: Considering the seven databases used during this review, we selected 281 papers, 90% of them were international and just under one-third (82 papers) report/describe and value their narrative in the first person about the illness experience. Conclusão: We discuss the relevance and responsibility of mental health research centered on the experience, the current sciences scenario, and the dialogues with singularities, and regarding the different experiences of illness in the Brazilian sociocultural contex