Final answer:
Illness is a person's experience and cultural interpretation of unwellness, differing from the biologically centered definition of disease. Personal narratives and social perceptions play significant roles in how illness is experienced and treated.
Step-by-step explanation:
Illness differs from a disease in that illness is the person's own perceptions and evaluation of how he or she feels. This concept is part of the sociocultural experience of health. Health is defined as your state of well-being while a disease is a biological abnormality. Illness is closely tied to the cultural and social construction of the experience of health and involves not just the biological factors but also the individual's feelings and cultural interpretations of symptoms. Malady is a more encompassing term that includes disease, illness, and sickness.
The social perception of ill health falls under the term sickness, and the narratives around illness can be captured through illness narrative interviews, being an ethnographic method to gather data about an individual's experience with their illness. It is crucial to note that not all medical conditions are acknowledged uniformly within the medical profession, with some conditions being contested by practitioners and these discrepancies can influence patients' treatment and care.