Lived Experiences Of Coping Research Articles

Challenging Interactions Between Patients With Severe Health Anxiety and the Healthcare System: A Qualitative Investigation.

Patients with severe health anxiety have complex interpersonal relationships with medical providers and others in their social context, often resulting in conflictual interactions with providers and perception of poor medical care. An adequate understanding of the causes and consequences of these interactions is lacking, particularly 1 informed by the experience of the patient. This study used qualitative methods to explore the development and maintenance of health anxiety from the perspective of patients with lived experience of coping with health anxiety and their interactions with the healthcare system. We conducted qualitative interviews with 11 primary care patients purposely sampled to describe their experience living with health anxiety, provider interactions, and social and family interactions surrounding health and health anxiety. We extracted themes related to living with health anxiety and interactions with providers and other significant relationships. Thematic content analysis revealed 5 themes including 3 causal themes, 1 response theme, and 1 theme reflecting factors that mitigate health anxiety. Causal themes included subthemes reflecting predisposing factors of the self, key stimulus events from patient learning history, and maladaptive social interaction factors. The response theme was comprised of 2 subthemes: logical conclusions and health anxiety symptoms. The mitigating factors theme included subthemes of a trusting care relationship and recognition of disconfirming evidence. The themes and constituent subthemes identified in this study largely map onto cognitive-behavioral theory of health anxiety, demonstrating alignment between patient experience and theory. The resulting model also identifies potential points of intervention in the developmental and maintenance process. We provide recommendations to maximize those points of intervention.

The loss and return of self: An interpretative phenomenological analysis of coping and recovery from chronic hepatitis B in China.

Chronic hepatitis B (CHB) is a prevalent disease with various negative consequences. The lived experience of coping and recovery of a patient with Chronic hepatitis B was explored in this study. A semistructured interview was conducted with one participant who had been recovered from Chronic hepatitis B for 10 years. Data were analyzed using interpretative phenomenological analysis. Five superordinate themes emerged, including lingering in the shadow of death anxiety, diminished functioning of the self, adopting a highly disciplined lifestyle, receiving social support, and the return of the self with scars. The findings revealed that the disease is deeply associated with moral standing, which means the diagnosis of Chronic hepatitis B might imply a loss of moral face for Chinese people living with the condition. Our findings point to the need for increasing knowledge about chronic hepatitis B, decoupling the disease from a moral standpoint, and providing a supportive environment.

Coping and Managing of Health and Functioning for People with Spinal Cord Injury: A Scoping Review

<h3>Objective(s)</h3> The objective of this scoping review was to explore how community-dwelling people with spinal cord injury (SCI) cope and manage their health and functioning. <h3>Data Sources</h3> Peer-reviewed journal articles were selected using the following academic databases: CINAHL Complete, Medline with Full Text, and PsycINFO. <h3>Study Selection</h3> Full-text journal articles included if they were published after 2000, included participants with traumatic or non-traumatic etiology and who were over the age 18 without cognitive impairments, focused on coping and managing of health and functioning, and were conducted in either Australia, Europe, New Zealand, and North America. <h3>Data Extraction</h3> Using the methodological process of Levac, Colquhoun & O'Brien (2010), article information was extracted and collated into a data chart with the following headings: authors & year of publication, country, purpose/objectives, design and methods, findings, limitations, and synthesis. Major findings were then extracted and categorized via inductive content analysis using qualitative software. <h3>Data Synthesis</h3> 35 peer-reviewed articles consisting of quantitative, qualitative, mixed-methods, and non-empirical study design were included. Personal strategies include cognitive behaviors, autonomy, hope, religion, spiritualty, health behaviors, and leisure, whereas external resources consist of formal healthcare support, peer support, informal support, and technology. <h3>Conclusions</h3> Community-dwelling people with SCI cope and manage their health and functioning using a wide variety of personal strategies and external resources. Future empirical research should focus on the lived experience of coping and managing of health and functioning in the community setting. <h3>Author(s) Disclosures</h3> N/A

Belief and belonging in later life: the lived experiences of coping among older Rwandans

ABSTRACT This article seeks to give voice to older Rwandans and their experiences of later life. It considers the contribution beliefs make to subjective well-being and coping by analysing self-reported sources of joy and sadness over the life course. The article draws from primary interviews conducted in Kinyarwanda with older Rwandans and church leaders from different denominations. Drawing from the East African context, the analysis contributes to the growing evidence in the field of gerontology showing how important ‘coping mechanisms’ underlie religious faith and practice. The four coping mechanisms identified are: support through personal prayer and resilience, socio-spiritual capital, a sense of belonging and meaning-making, and healthy behaviours influenced by religious values. The findings have implications for African church and national bodies engaged in pastoral care, as well as community organisations working with older people.

Children's Coping with Natural Disasters: Lessons from Floods and Droughts in Muzarabani District, Zimbabwe

The purpose of this field report is to describe children's lived experiences of coping with increasing exposure to natural hazards in Zimbabwe. Using a phenomenological approach, our team interviewed 40 children, 8–18 years old. The capacity of children to cope with increasing natural hazards in their environment was based on their ability to adjust their normal lives. Children relied on extraordinary activities to respond to the disaster impacts. These included: accepting government intervention, providing labor, skipping and dropping out of school, collecting and selling food, firewood, and assets, and early marriages. Most of the identified coping mechanisms, however, subsequently increased children's vulnerabilities. Helping children to cope with disasters is also discussed.

‘Elastic band strategy’: women's lived experience of coping with domestic violence in rural Indonesia

Background: Experiencing domestic violence is considered a chronic and stressful life event. A theoretical framework of coping strategies can be used to understand how women deal with domestic violence. Traditional values strongly influenced by religious teachings that interpret men as the leaders of women play an important role in the lives of Javanese women, where women are obliged to obey their husbands. Little is known about how sociocultural and psychosocial contexts influence the ways in which women cope with domestic violence.Objective: Our study aimed to deepen our understanding of how rural Javanese women cope with domestic violence. Our objective was to explore how the sociocultural context influences coping dynamics of women survivors of domestic violence in rural Purworejo.Design: A phenomenological approach was used to transform lived experiences into textual expressions of the coping dynamics of women survivors of domestic violence.Results: Experiencing chronic violence ruined the women's personal lives because of the associated physical, mental, psychosocial, and financial impairments. These chronic stressors led women to access external and internal resources to form coping strategies. Both external and internal factors prompted conflicting impulses to seek support, that is, to escape versus remain in the relationship. This strong tension led to a coping strategy that implied a long-term process of moving between actively opposing the violence and surrendering or tolerating the situation, resembling an elastic band that stretches in and out.Conclusions: Women survivors in Purworejo face a lack of institutional support and tend to have traditional beliefs that hamper their potential to stop the abuse. Although the women in this study were educated and economically independent, they still had difficulty mobilizing internal and external support to end the abuse, partly due to internalized gender norms.

Empowerment of the rural parents/caregivers of children with heart diseases in Namibia to facilitate coping with the demands of caring at home.

Aim:The purpose of this study was to describe how the parents/caregivers of children with heart diseases cope with the demands of caring for these children at home, with the purpose to develop a home-based health care programme to facilitate the parents/caregivers’ coping with the demands of care.Methods:A qualitative, exploratory, descriptive, and contextual study was conducted. Phenomenological data on the lived experiences of coping with the demands to care by the parents/caregivers and of living with the burden of the disease by the children were gathered and interpreted from a purposefully selected sample of 5 multiple cases of parents/caregivers and children with heart disease from the rural areas.Results:The findings have revealed poor coping with the demands of caring among the parents/caregivers, as characterized by the experiences of emotional challenges, disruptive social functioning and social relations, lack of support from the family and societal organizations, financial difficulties and of course the experiences of decreased vitality by the children. As a result, the need to empower the parents/caregivers for them to cope with providing a continuum care to their children who have heart disease was identified. The dynamics to mitigate the negative experiences were conceptualized. Therefore, the interventions of a home-based health care programme as an interface to facilitate the parents/caregivers to cope with the challenges caused by the demands to care were developed.Conclusions:The need for empowerment of these parents/caregivers can be met through the implementation of multi-component interventions, which draw together all the possible determinants factors and the coping methods to facilitate coping.

Being Relaxed and Powerful: Children’s Lived Experiences of Coping with Stress

Our aim was to describe and develop an understanding of children’s lived experiences of coping with stress. Twenty‐three Swedish children, ages 10–12, wrote open letters and were interviewed. The phenomenological analysis resulted in three main themes: (i) depending on oneself, others and the world around, (ii) choosing to be a doer and (iii) being in the here and now. We understood the children’s lived experiences of coping with stress as them being relaxed and powerful. The children chose to be active doers or inactive beings and their relationships, as well as their surroundings, helped or hindered their coping. Possible health promotion work is discussed.

"Frustrating disability": The lived experience of coping with the rehabilitation phase following flexor tendon surgery

"Frustrating disability": The lived experience of coping with the rehabilitation phase following flexor tendon surgery

“Frustrating disability”: The lived experience of coping with the rehabilitation phase following flexor tendon surgery

Challenging rehabilitation regimes following flexor tendon surgery require patients to complete an hourly exercise regime and wear a thermoplastic splint constantly for four to six weeks. Building on earlier research by the first author the data from his interviews of five peoples’ experiences and meanings of their rehabilitation was re-analysed using a phenomenological lifeworld approach. The individuals were found to cope in different ways and degrees with the frustration of disability. Three themes—“struggling-adapting”, “retreating-battling” and “denying-accepting”—capture something of the ambivalence of their experience. The findings also provide insight into how flexor tendon injury, and subsequent surgery and rehabilitation, impact on individuals’ lifeworlds. Damage wreaked on daily life comes as a surprise. In different ways, they are all challenged to come to terms with the shock of pain, disability and the double trauma of surgery and rehabilitation. The challenge also involves an emotional and social struggle as personal relationships are disrupted. Three types of phenomenological analyses—narrative, lifeworld and thematic—are presented as iterative, deepening elaborations. Together they offer a more holistic, if still tentative, picture highlighting the relevance of attending to peoples’ personal, social and practical responses beyond simply focusing in reductionist ways on physical function.

Living with dying: coping with HIV disease.

People diagnosed with HIV disease experience multiple and severe stressors; however, little is known about these stressors and coping among this population. This phenomenological study was undertaken to (1) gain an understanding of the informants' lived experiences of coping with HIV disease and (2) develop a disease-specific instrument to measure stress and coping. The study involved interviews with 36 people with HIV disease. The interviews were analyzed and synthesized to (1) derive the structure of the experience through phenomenological analysis and (2) identify stress and coping themes through content analysis. Only the findings from the phenomenological analysis are reported here. The structure of the lived experience of coping with HIV disease unfolds from the initial diagnosis of being HIV-seropositive through the diagnosis of AIDS to impending death. The processes involved in this structure were labeled Living with Dying, Fighting the Sickness, and Getting Worn Out.