Coping With The Psychological Effects Of Illness

Sudden, severe ill health comes as a shock and presents several challenges, most notably, loss of confidence. Suddenly people are afraid to take exercise, have sex or even go to the shops. Their entire self-image takes a battering, and this roller-coaster of uncertainty often leads to anxiety and depression. This book looks at the learning curve involved in sudden and chronic illness, and explores key ways to build psychological resilience during this time of challenge. Whether it concerns cancer, heart disease, diabetes, or a mental health condition, it explores the common psychological issues that arise when someones usual health and routine are disrupted, and discusses the impact of illness on relationships and family. Drawing on CBT techniques, it offers practical self-help strategies to help deal with peoples changed expectations of themselves, and with the related lifestyle changes. Topics include anxiety and depression; insomnia; discomfort and pain; working with health professionals; dealing with the side effects of medication; relaxation; getting support.

This book helps the primary care physician navigate the normative and non-normative psychological responses to illness, provides advice on coping and offers guidance on mental health referrals. The concise but comprehensive text emphasizes the basics, including responses to serious and potentially life-threatening illness, normal and maladaptive coping responses in medically ill individuals, and specific aspects of the illness process. Case examples illustrate the concepts discussed. Includes a chapter on psychotropic medications, and another on the special circumstances of non-compliant patients. The book concludes with discussion of family situations and offers recommendations on referring patients to a mental health provider who specializes in treating the medically ill.

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This book synthesizes the expanding literature on coping styles and strategies by analyzing how individuals with CID face challenges, find and use their strengths, and alter their environment to fit their life-changing realities. The book includes up-to-date information on coping with high-profile conditions, such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes, arthritis, spinal cord injuries, and traumatic brain injury, in-depth coverage of HIV/AIDS, chronic pain, and severe mental illness, and more.

Health psychology is a rapidly expanding discipline at the interface of psychology and clinical medicine. This text offers a comprehensive, accessible, one-stop resource for clinical psychologists, mental health professionals and specialists in health-related matters.

This book provides new ideas about how patients and their fami lies cope with serious health crises. Biomedical knowledge has expanded abruptly in the past decade during which time diag nostic and treatment procedures have become unusually specific and effective. Similarly, important advances have taken place in our understanding of the central role of psychosocial factors in health and illness. Recent trends have sparked the formulation of useful concepts of coping skills and social resources and have empha sized the value of an active assertive role for patients in the pro cess of obtaining health care. The emergence of subspecialties such as behavioral medicine and health psychology has stimulated renewed interest in these areas. Moreover, the growth of holistic medicine and a biopsychosocial orientation highlights the contri bution of a psychosocial perspective in an integrated framework for providing health care. To cover these diverse trends, I offer a unified conceptual approach for understanding the process of coping with the crisis of physical illness and identifying the underlying adaptive tasks and domains of coping skills involved in this process. The first half of the book covers coping with selected health crises, such as birth defects and perinatal death, childhood and adult cancer, and chronic physical disabilities.

In August, 1985, the 2nd International Conference on Illness Behaviour was held in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The first International Conference took place one year previous in Adelaide, South Australia, Australia. This book is based on the proceedings of the second conference. The purpose behind this conference was to facilitate the development of a single integrated model to account for illness experience and presentation. A major focus of the conference was to outline methodological issues related to current behaviour research. A multidiscipl~nary approach was emphasized because of the bias that collaborative efforts are likely to be the most successful in achieving greater understanding of illness behaviour. Significant advances in our knowledge are occurring in all areas of the biological and social sciences, albeit more slowly in the latter areas. Marked specialization in each of these areas has lead to greater difficulty in integrating new knowledge with that of other areas and the development of a meaningful cohesive model to which all can relate. Thus there is a major need for forums such as that provided by this conference.