Beyond the clinical aspects: the social implications of Parkinson’s disease

From a clinical standpoint, Parkinson’s disease (PD) is a severe, disabling neurodege-nerative disorder characterised by a progressive and chronic disturbance, mainly (though not exclusively) affecting movement control and balance (Poewe et al., 2017). However, this definition focuses on the clinical aspects of the disease and only captures certain aspects of it. As Gadamer (1994) reminds us, illness is not uniquely what medical science declares it to be (i.e. the outcome of a verifiable clinical assessment), but rather an expe-rience of a suffering individual.In the case of Parkinson’s disease, there is a large body of literature documenting the effects on the physical (disease) and psychological (illness) level, whereas less attention has been paid to the implications on the social level (sickness). This contribution is prima-rily aimed at exploring the latter