Phenomenology of Vulnerability: A Person-Centred Approach.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused global stress. However, people reacted differently, some with various forms of distress. Although vulnerable groups were more likely to suffer in this situation, heterogeneity was also reported at this level. We revised the concept of vulnerability in medicine and mental health using schizophrenic symptoms as paradigmatic examples. In our view, studying vulnerability to stressful situations, the following points are fundamental: (1) the individual emotional reaction; (2) the personal meaning attributed to the events; (3) the way the person concretely takes position in front of this (distressing and possibly uncanny) experience; and (4) the way and extent to which the person has contributed to the determination and constitution of the stressful situation. Applied to the pandemic situation, we suggest that the reported heterogeneity of reactions depended on the personal way the persons took position in front of the situation they were experiencing. The way they took position depended on the specificities of the situation to be faced but also on their personal way of managing the consequent imbalance of their existential dimensions of anthropological vulnerability.