This study examines the place occupied by chronic illness in the inner lives of 15 women suffering from Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE). A phenomenological analysis of illness narratives demonstrates that sufferers construe their illness as a protagonist or, using an object-relations informed perspective, as an internal object. That is, with time sufferers constituted a mental representation of SLE that in itself has the power to influence the sufferers' affective states and behaviors. An insight into these "illness relations" is conducive to a better understanding of the "lived experience" of SLE for disabled, economically disadvantaged women. Through their experience, the study of risk and resilience in chronic illness may be advanced.
This qualitative research focused on the significance of subjective experience of mothers who gave birth in an emergency Caesarean section. Ten first-time mothers experiencing emergency Caesarean section were interviewed, and their narrative accounts were analyzed using Giorgi's phenomenological method. Mothers described alienation from the infant on encountering her/him; primal difficulties in holding; a 'mechanistic' pattern of childcare at home; over-apprehension and fear of a cradle-death. A few of the women seemed to cope with these experiences by performing 'a symbolic adoption' of their infants. In the context of object-relations theory, the findings, will potentially inform psychological care in obstetrics and gynaecology.
Extant literature on depression in chronic illness points to the association between depression and increased morbidity (Moussavi et al., 2007). There is to date little research on the surmised reciprocal relationship between the two. This longitudinal study of 30 women suffering from systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) was conducted using self-report measures as well as physical illness markers, in order to place depression among SLE patients within what is known of the psychosocial context of depression. The objective of this study was to differentiate between the broadly illness-related and personality-related aspects of SLE depression. Results show that depression is preceded by concealment of SLE symptoms and by illness intrusiveness, a concept reflecting the subjective illness experience. Furthermore, depression is shown to precede changes in illness intrusiveness. Thus, illness intrusiveness and symptom concealment - but not physical illness markers - emerge as key factors in understanding the co-morbidity of SLE and depression. These findings, viewed within the methodological limitations of this study, indicate the centrality of perceptions, of the 'lived experience' of the illness, in the detection and treatment of depression among women with SLE.
The interaction of client and therapist relational patterns may be a key factor in the development of the therapeutic alliance and might potentially impact client outcome. Therapeutic practice will likely be improved if therapists are more aware of their own relational patterns and the ways these interact with their clients' relational patterns. Striving for this awareness should probably be a main focal point for therapists throughout their careers, in their training, supervisions and personal therapies.
Chronic pain may be internalized and integrated into the sufferer's object-relations, thereby influencing sufferer's depression. To examine this, fifty-five women suffering from chronic pain were assessed as to their pain-personification, pain intensity, depression, anxiety, and pain related distress. The assessment protocol included an innovative self-report measure, the Pain Personification Questionnaire (PPQ), measuring pain as an internal "bad" object. Controlling for level of pain intensity, we found that the PPQ predicts depression, illness intrusiveness, and pain-related distress, but not anxiety. These findings encourage an object-relations approach to the understanding and treatment of depression in chronic illness.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.