scholarly journals Understanding the Relationship between Depression and Chronic Diseases Such as Diabetes and Hypertension: A Grounded Theory Study

Author(s):  
Pablo Alberto Herrera ◽  
Solange Campos-Romero ◽  
Wilsa Szabo ◽  
Pablo Martínez ◽  
Viviana Guajardo ◽  
...  

There is a bi-directional relationship between depression and chronic illnesses such as diabetes and hypertension. This comorbidity is associated with higher mortality risk and diminishes the efficacy of interventions. The specific mechanisms of this mutual influence are still not fully understood, and most intervention protocols address these conditions separately. This study aims to improve our understanding of this relationship. We interviewed 18 patients and 24 health care professionals, focusing on understanding the different ways in which depression and chronic illness could influence each other. Our results show a common cyclical pattern and specific situations where the reported bi-directional relationship does not occur. We discuss the importance of opening a space for the patient’s grief process after the chronic illness diagnosis, managing the demands and stress of the patient’s treatment, and how to adjust the treatment to the different needs and possibilities of each person.

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 94
Author(s):  
Cas O'Neill ◽  
Gerry Silk ◽  
Gillian Lowe ◽  
Renee Lee ◽  
Sultan Cinar ◽  
...  

The expectations which both consumers and service providers bring to health care relationships are based on ethnicity and culture, as well as on individual and family characteristics, education and social circumstances. This article looks at the relationship between ethnicity and prevalence of illness; the interplay between ethnicity and social disadvantage; some cultural meanings attributed to illness; and how meanings may affect treatment. Four accounts are given of how two chronic illnesses - asthma and diabetes - may be viewed within the Timorese, Chinese, Turkish and Vietnamese communities.


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 91 (5) ◽  
pp. ii-ii

In June 1992, 35 health care professionals, child and disability advocates, researchers, clinicians, and parents met at Wingspread Center in Racine, Wisconsin, for an invitational conference on Culture and Chronic Illness in Childhood. The meeting had as its goal the identification of the state of knowledge on the interface between culture, chronic illness, child development, and family functioning so as to lay the foundations for "culturally appropriate" health policy formulation, "culturally sensitive" services, and "culturally competent" clinicians. The purpose of this special supplement is to establish a national agenda for research, policy, service delivery, and training in addressing the needs of all children with chronic illnesses and disabilities that takes the family, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and culture into full account. To meet this task, five papers were commissioned. The first, by Newacheck et al, addresses the changes in incidence and prevalence of chronic illness and disability among children and youth by ethnic group. The second paper, by McManus et al, focuses on the trends in health services organization, delivery, and financing as they vary among ethnic groups in the United States. What emerges is a rhetoric of cultural sensitivity not paralleled in the organization or financing of health services. Groce and Zola's paper addresses how cultural attitudes and beliefs are the foundations of our perceptions about health and illness. Those perceptions at times are predisposed to conflict with a health care professional who, coming from a different culture, may hold different norms and beliefs. Brookins grounds her discussion within the context of child development and argues that for a child of color or one whose ethnic heritage is other than mainstream, the key to developmental success is bicultural competence—the ability to walk in and between two worlds.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elana Jackson

This study explores the perspectives of young people with chronic illness on their participation in health care discussions and decision making, with a specific focus on the role of parents in facilitating participation. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 26 participants between the ages of 5 and 18. Participants were recruited from inpatient units at a pediatric hospital. A range of chronic illnesses were represented among members of the sample, including kidney failure, Crohn’s disease, organ transplant, and sickle cell anemia. Following data collection, a focused analysis was conducted of participants’ statements related to parent involvement in the health care decision making process. Salient themes that emerged from analysis of the data reveal a complex and bidirectional process in which young people and parents negotiate children’s participation in making decisions related to their health care. Based on the findings, a collaborative-contextual model of decision making is proposed.


2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 117-135
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Chiarello

Socio-legal scholars have long been interested in the relationship between law and morality. This article uses a multilevel approach to understanding this relationship by focusing on health care professionals, key actors in an institution that covers broad swaths of social life and that serves as a key site of moral meaning making and practice. I demonstrate how morality and law interface differently at three levels: through daily social interaction, during which providers assess patients’ deservingness while patients attempt to present themselves as morally worthy; through organizational structures and processes that establish legalistic rules and bring diverse workers into shared space; and through field-level legal and moral infrastructures that shape frontline decision making and that change due to social movement mobilization. The article concludes by describing the benefits of a multilevel approach to examining the interplay between law, morality, and health care work and suggesting strategies for theoretically investigating these relationships more completely.


2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Coppa ◽  
Frances M Boyle

Self-help groups offer a unique form of support based on mutual understanding and the experiential knowledge of members. They constitute a potentially valuable resource for assisting people to manage chronic illness and its impacts. We conducted in-depth interviews with 15 members and the leaders of five chronic illness-related self-help groups in Newcastle, New South Wales. The focus was on small, voluntary groups with little or no external funding; agencies that are often overlooked in terms of their contribution to the health care system. Those interviewed readily identified benefits relating to quality of life, illness management, and interactions with health care professionals. Increased emotional and social support, access to an expanded information base, a better understanding of their illness, and a greater sense of confidence and control in relation to it seemed to enhance the capacity of members to engage in active self-management of their conditions. Along with such benefits, group leaders also highlighted some of the challenges faced by volunteers who run these agencies. Self-help groups are effective structures that can serve as an adjunct to clinical care and provide tangible benefits to their members. Further investigation and better recognition of these groups is warranted given their potential to assist those with chronic illness and to contribute to national policy objectives for chronic disease management such as those identified in the Sharing Health Care Initiative.


2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 136 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sue Jacobi ◽  
Rod MacLeod

INTRODUCTION: A diagnosis of any chronic progressive illness can be a traumatic experience. People wonder how they will be able to cope and health care professionals wonder how they can help those so affected. The aim of the study was to discover how people find meaning when they are diagnosed with chronic illness. The research question asked is: How do people make sense of living with chronic progressive illness? METHOD: This is a qualitative study using a phenomenological approach to apply what is learned to developing therapeutic strategies in order to help those so diagnosed to find the meaning they need in order to live with resilience. Semi-structured interviews with seven people were held in order to determine how they cope with living with chronic progressive illness. The results were then used to develop some suggestions for health professionals as they seek to assist people with chronic progressive illness. FINDINGS: All participants displayed much resilience and determination which was found to emerge from three main themes: memory, hope and meaning. Memory was seen to be the link between all the themes. These are described and, arising out of the results of this study, some suggestions are made in order to assist in management. CONCLUSION: It is possible for health care professionals to assist patients to make sense of chronic illness by helping them to view their illness as part of life, and therefore a challenge to be faced rather than seeing life as dominated by illness. KEYWORDS: Chronic disease; resilience, psychological; narration; psychology, existential


2002 ◽  
Vol 9 (5) ◽  
pp. 472-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deirdre Hyland

The purpose of this article is to examine whether patient/client autonomy is always compatible with the nurse’s role of advocacy. The author looks separately at the concepts of autonomy and advocacy, and considers them in relation to the reality of clinical practice from professional, ethical and legal perspectives. Considerable ambiguity is found regarding the legitimacy of claims of a unique function for nurses to act as patient advocates. To act as an advocate may put nurses at personal and professional risk. It may also be deemed arrogant and insulting to other health care professionals. Patient autonomy can be seen as a subcategory of the right of every individual to self-determination, and as such is protected by law. However, it is questionable whether the traditionally paternalistic approach to health care provision truly respects the autonomous rights of each patient. The author considers examples and cases from the literature that resulted in professional and/or personal difficulties for the nurses involved, and also reflects on an incident from her own practice where a positive outcome was achieved that demonstrated compatibility between the concepts under consideration.


2007 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 227-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sally Thorne ◽  
Valerie Oglov ◽  
Elizabeth-Anne Armstrong ◽  
T. Gregory Hislop

Objectives: Communication between health care providers and patients with cancer and other chronic diseases typically references probabilities that certain future events will or will not occur. Beyond the context of diagnostic encounters and the transmission of “bad news,” such “prognostic” communications take place in various forms throughout the illness trajectory. It is well known that such information transmitted badly can have devastating psychosocial consequences for patients and their families and, conversely, that difficult information exchanged with sensitivity can lend tremendous support. This study aimed to extend our understanding of how such communications are received and interpreted by patients, so that we might optimally apply what we know about general principles of effective communication within the particularly challenging context of predicting futures.Methods: We conducted a combined secondary analysis of two prior qualitative studies into patient perceptions of helpful and unhelpful health care communication with 200 cancer patients and 30 persons with chronic illness. These data sets offered a rich resource for comparing perceptions across a range of contextual variables, and secondary analysis focused on future-oriented interactions, including both prognostication and prediction.Results: The accounts of patients with cancer and chronic illness reveal various ways in which health care communications involving future projections interact with their human experience of hope, powerfully shaping their capacity to make sense of and live with serious illness. They include a synthesis of what patients recommend health care professionals know and understand about this challenging dynamic.Significance of results: The findings of this study offer a distinct angle of vision onto the various communications that involve future predictions, illuminating a patient perspective with the potential to inform health care communication approaches that are both informative and therapeutic. As such, the study supports a dynamic understanding of the tenuous balance between hope and honesty in the clinical encounter.


2006 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-76
Author(s):  
Carol Trotter ◽  
Lynn Rasmussen

THE QUESTION POSED TO PARTICIPANTS AT THE International Academy of Nurse Editors (INANE) was “Why don’t nurses write for publication?” The answer that surfaced throughout the discussions was because nurses never learned why and how to write professional manuscripts.1 It is our belief that authorship should be part of the curriculum of every advanced practice nursing (APN) program. Four articles published in this issue of Neonatal Network® were written by University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) Neonatal Nurse Practitioner (NNP) students as part of their required course work. Neonatal Network® has chosen to highlight these student writers in an effort to encourage all neonatal nurses to consider this opportunity and to encourage faculty to incorporate this activity into their curricula for APNs. Sharing one’s knowledge and expertise is an essential element of advanced nursing practice and provides the opportunity to enhance the science of nursing practice. By writing for publication, students work toward achieving the following recently published Acute Care NP Competencies:2• Integrates research to promote evidence-based practice for patients with acute, critical, and chronic illness.• Participates in formal and informal education provided to other health care professionals to promote positive outcomes during complex acute, critical, and chronic illness.• Contributes to the knowledge base of the health care community through research, presentations, publications, and involvement in professional organizations.• Promotes valuing lifelong learning and evidence-based practice while continually acquiring knowledge and skills needed to address questions arising in practice to improve patient care.


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