Abstract
Autobiographical illness narratives are expected to be used as educational materials for nursing education. The aim of the present study was to reach deeper understanding of people with mental illness through analysis of the structure of the story of an autobiographical illness narrative book "What is the meaning of mental disease?: The experience of a patient with mental illness" written by Natsuko Furukawa. The body text was analyzed by the text mining technique and by the individual analysis method of autobiography. The results indicated that the text consisted not only of the author's personal experience but also of positive and concrete messages of expectation and hope for the surrounding people and the general society. This kind of integration of experiential story and positive social message ought to have impact for readers to better understand people with mental illness by reducing prejudice and taking in information to get along with them. This sort of autobiographical mentally illness narratives are to be utilized for education in the area of psychiatric and mental health nursing.
