mpathtowellbeing

Patient Centered Care

 

THE FIGHT WILL BE YOUR OWN click on above image

One day we will all be a patient, if we are not already.  Each of us has an opportunity to decide on the kind of care we would like to receive- curative, palliative, or end of live.  The potential struggle around deciding will be our own.

 

Patients with acute and especially chronic conditions often have to adjust their aspirations, lifestyle, and employment.  Many grieve, though not necessarily consciously, over their predicament as part of an attempt to process changing circumstances.  Some experience prolonged distress and may develop mood disturbances, most commonly depression or anxiety.  These types of mood states feed into an ongoing sense of hopelessness that undermine a patient’s ability to cope.  They create needless suffering and can exert a corrosive effect on family relationships and other social dynamics.

For patients and their families, hope is an integral part of coping.  Maintaining hope is key for facilitating recovery, dealing with ongoing chronic medical conditions, and also for managing well-being.  Chronic illness, an in-between-stage…not acute and not hospice…can be a particularly trying experience that chips away at hope.  Addressing psychological well-being during any form of illness is very important.

Depression and anxiety are commonly experienced to some degree especially when dealing with chronic disease.  Both have a physiological as well as psychological component.  They are natural responses to major change.  They are associated with attachment and are experienced as a result of having to detach and let go of beliefs, assumptions, and expectations.  Unpleasant as these modes are, they are not states of mind to be avoided and helped out of.  Rather, they are states we may need help moving through…’to the other side – a consequence of detaching and letting go – so we can accept a new normal.

Social norms in the United States and elsewhere today can make it difficult for us to give ourselves permission to experience depression and anxiety or to perceive it as part of a normal response and natural process for deep healing.  Seemingly, experiencing unpleasant, hurtful, or demeaning circumstances in life are to be minimized under current social norms.  They are to be glossed over, white washed pretty positive with shallow platitudes and affirmations that often lead to guilt and shame and hinder our ability to take in the fullness of life with all its contradictions and ugliness as well as beauty.

One social norm that has gained traction over the last 75 years has to do the notion of applying positive thinking as a means to helping us cope with undesirable or unmanageable circumstance in life; i.e., such as living with a chronic or incurable disease.  Unfortunately, this way of one-side thinking, like all others, tends to result in our biasing incoming data, skewing our perception so we effectively cannot take in more of total reality.  This can lead to all sorts of complications resulting in confusion, denial, resentment, and shame.  Positive thinking has merit, but to deny its shadow side, with all its limitation and unhealthy outcomes, is to do an injustice to our humanity and to minimize the human experience of suffering for instance.

Healthy coping means more than ‘positive thinking.’  It implies a capacity to tolerate and express a wide range of concerns and emotions associated with a disease prognosis, medical condition, or mental state.  Having the ability to be in touch with both positive and negative aspects of the disease experience, to be aware of contradiction and conflicting thoughts and feelings, is an essential part of being able to develop a healthy understanding of ourselves, our perceptions, and of a situation.  Being able to dialogue with self or others around anxieties, uncertainties, fears, losses, and grief requires that we consciously be in touch with multiple dimensions of our experience and how it affects us in mind, body, and spirit, and within a social context.

‘Positive thinking’ can be helpful as one aspect of a healthy coping strategy.  However, when positive thinking alone is employed, it can lead to avoidance of any unpleasantness of life, which can result in making matters worse.  It is necessary to understand that any one-sided perspective thinking carries with it a danger of our losing awareness of implications embedded in the circumstances.  Psychological equilibrium is what is most needed in times of duress.  To have it, we must have a means of holding tension between opposites of feeling and thought in order to gain insight and accurately assess a situation, which can enhance our decision making ability.

 

Following are resources to help in the challenge of deciding which stance to take and approach to deal with managing illness and quality of life.

 Articles 

Websites

 

 

Click on above image to enlarge

 

LIVING WITH CHRONIC ILLNESS VIDEO CLIPS

 

PATIENT ADVOCACY RESOURCES 

 

SUPPORT GROUP MEETING  for patients click [here]

For more resources click [here].  Scroll down to the Patient Centered Care section.