Conference Agenda

Providing care for children with type 1 diabetes requires constant attention. Teachers play a crucial role in the institutional socialization of children living with diabetes. Deficient diabetes management in schools may cause several troublesome consequences, such as absenteeism, stress or depression, poor performance and low quality of life. Therefore, understanding teachers' attitudes towards diabetes care may be essential for proper diabetes management. In this study, we explored the attitudes of teachers towards diabetes care by conducting semi-structured interviews (3 focus groups and 20 individual interviews) with 30 teachers working in kindergartens and schools. We performed qualitative content analysis based on the theory of the three components of attitude - knowledge, emotions, and behavior. The knowledge component included general knowledge about diabetes and its care, and the affective component revealed empathy and both integrating and segregating approaches towards children with diabetes. The behavior component revealed how teachers contribute to the care and integration of children with diabetes in schools, such as supporting them through health awareness education and peer sensitization. Our findings suggest that, in addition to diabetes management tasks, teachers can help children with type 1 diabetes by educating them and their peers about healthy living and acceptance.

Descriptive case studies were instrumental to establishing the origins of mental health treatment, but their visibility has declined with the ascendency of evidence-based practices based on large sample. experiment-based research. The failure of such research to account for mental illness experiences of those affected by racism, cisheterosexism, homophobia and transphobia suggests different methodologies and evidence are needed to be better understand illness as experienced by racial, sexual, and gender minority people. This paper presents examples drawn from case study analysis in a project exploring access to mental health care for lesbian, bisexual, and trans people in Ontario Canada. The case study method shaped focused, purposeful engagement with experiences of racial minority LGBT people and their stories of mental illness. The within and across-case analyses transformed reports of depression into contextualized narratives of suffering in environments that allow gender-based violence, hopelessness, and long-term despair. The evidence of this research points to avenues of inquiry and intervention with racial, sexual and gender minority clients that could promote mental health and well-

We will present a discursive analysis of tattoos related to crisis situations and the respective
interpretations by their wearers. Our investigations focus on the semiotic aspects of discursive
corporeality and iconicity of tattoos and the positioning process as it is enfolding through
interacting with their owners.
Tattoos are pictorial motifs of a culturally defined semiotic system, but at the same time,
tattooed persons as active agents creat personal meanings. This meaning making procedure
is semiotic, narrative and discursive at the same time, but it is also a bodily process through
the making of the tattoo, wearing it on the body, and the discursive acts of talking about and
with the body. We will document that in the process of meaning making, not only new or
reinterpreted meanings are created, but persons also create their own positions, their own
situated identity. These positions determine the discursive position of the persons, of the
embodied speakers both in everyday speech situations and in the social discourse in a broader
sense. At the same time, they also become the kind of identity positions which support of a
more positive Self-image and provide a device for coping with the crisis situations.