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Beliefs About Health and Illness in Latin-American Migrants with Diabetes Living in Sweden

The study explored beliefs about health and illness in Latin American migrants diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM) living in Sweden, and investigated the influence on health-related behavior including self-care and care-seeking behavior. Migrants are particularly affected in the diabetes pandemia....

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Autores principales: Hjelm, Katarina, Bard, Karin
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Bentham Open 2013
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680992/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23802030
http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874434601307010057
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author Hjelm, Katarina
Bard, Karin
author_facet Hjelm, Katarina
Bard, Karin
author_sort Hjelm, Katarina
collection PubMed
description The study explored beliefs about health and illness in Latin American migrants diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM) living in Sweden, and investigated the influence on health-related behavior including self-care and care-seeking behavior. Migrants are particularly affected in the diabetes pandemia. Beliefs about health and illness determine health-related behaviour and health but no studies have been found on Latin American migrants with DM. An explorative study design with focus-group interviews of nine persons aged 36-77 years from a diabetes clinic was used. Health was described from a pathogenetic or a salutogenetic perspective: ‘freedom from disease or feeling of well-being’, and being autonomous and able to work. Economic hardship due to expenses for medications and food for DM affected health. Individual factors such as diet, exercise and compliance with advice, and social factors with good social relations and avoidance of stress, often caused by having experienced severe events related to migrational experiences, were considered important for maintaining health and could cause DM. Disturbed relations to others (social factors), punishment by God or Fate (supernatural factors), intake of diuretics and imbalance between warmth and cold (natural factors) were also perceived as causes. A mix of biomedical and traditional explanations and active self-care behaviour with frequent use of herbs was found. It is important to assess the individual’s beliefs, and health professionals, particularly nurses, should incorporate discussions of alternative treatments and other components of explanatory models and co-operate with social workers to consider influence of finances and migrational experiences on health.
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spelling pubmed-36809922013-06-25 Beliefs About Health and Illness in Latin-American Migrants with Diabetes Living in Sweden Hjelm, Katarina Bard, Karin Open Nurs J Article The study explored beliefs about health and illness in Latin American migrants diagnosed with diabetes mellitus (DM) living in Sweden, and investigated the influence on health-related behavior including self-care and care-seeking behavior. Migrants are particularly affected in the diabetes pandemia. Beliefs about health and illness determine health-related behaviour and health but no studies have been found on Latin American migrants with DM. An explorative study design with focus-group interviews of nine persons aged 36-77 years from a diabetes clinic was used. Health was described from a pathogenetic or a salutogenetic perspective: ‘freedom from disease or feeling of well-being’, and being autonomous and able to work. Economic hardship due to expenses for medications and food for DM affected health. Individual factors such as diet, exercise and compliance with advice, and social factors with good social relations and avoidance of stress, often caused by having experienced severe events related to migrational experiences, were considered important for maintaining health and could cause DM. Disturbed relations to others (social factors), punishment by God or Fate (supernatural factors), intake of diuretics and imbalance between warmth and cold (natural factors) were also perceived as causes. A mix of biomedical and traditional explanations and active self-care behaviour with frequent use of herbs was found. It is important to assess the individual’s beliefs, and health professionals, particularly nurses, should incorporate discussions of alternative treatments and other components of explanatory models and co-operate with social workers to consider influence of finances and migrational experiences on health. Bentham Open 2013-04-05 /pmc/articles/PMC3680992/ /pubmed/23802030 http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874434601307010057 Text en © Hjelm and Bard; Licensee Bentham Open. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ This is an open access article licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/) which permits unrestricted, non-commercial use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Article
Hjelm, Katarina
Bard, Karin
Beliefs About Health and Illness in Latin-American Migrants with Diabetes Living in Sweden
title Beliefs About Health and Illness in Latin-American Migrants with Diabetes Living in Sweden
title_full Beliefs About Health and Illness in Latin-American Migrants with Diabetes Living in Sweden
title_fullStr Beliefs About Health and Illness in Latin-American Migrants with Diabetes Living in Sweden
title_full_unstemmed Beliefs About Health and Illness in Latin-American Migrants with Diabetes Living in Sweden
title_short Beliefs About Health and Illness in Latin-American Migrants with Diabetes Living in Sweden
title_sort beliefs about health and illness in latin-american migrants with diabetes living in sweden
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3680992/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23802030
http://dx.doi.org/10.2174/1874434601307010057
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