This article summarizes the rationale, development and application of the McGill Illness Narrative Interview (MINI), a theoretically driven, semistructured, qualitative interview protocol designed to elicit illness narratives in health research. The MINI is sequentially structured with three main sections that obtain: (1) A basic temporal narrative of symptom and illness experience, organized in terms of the contiguity of events; (2) salient prototypes related to current health problems, based on previous experience of the interviewee, family members or friends, and mass media or other popular representations; and (3) any explanatory models, including labels, causal attributions, expectations for treatment, course and outcome. Supplementary sections of the MINI explore help seeking and pathways to care, treatment experience, adherence and impact of the illness on identity, self-perception and relationships with others. Narratives produced by the MINI can be used with a wide variety of interpretive strategies drawn from medical anthropology, sociology and discursive psychology.
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