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Patterns of illness disclosure among Indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study
BACKGROUND: Slum dwellers display specific traits when it comes to disclosing their illnesses to professionals. The resulting actions lead to poor health-seeking behaviour and underutilisation of existing formal health facilities. The ways that slum people use to communicate their feelings about ill...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2018
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5771001/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29338708 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-018-0142-x |
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author | Das, Moumita Angeli, Federica Krumeich, Anja J. S. M. van Schayck, Onno C. P. |
author_facet | Das, Moumita Angeli, Federica Krumeich, Anja J. S. M. van Schayck, Onno C. P. |
author_sort | Das, Moumita |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Slum dwellers display specific traits when it comes to disclosing their illnesses to professionals. The resulting actions lead to poor health-seeking behaviour and underutilisation of existing formal health facilities. The ways that slum people use to communicate their feelings about illness, the type of confidants that they choose, and the supportive and unsupportive social and cultural interactions to which they are exposed have not yet been studied in the Indian context, which constitutes an important knowledge gap for Indian policymakers and practitioners alike. To that end, this study examines the patterns of illness disclosure in Indian slums and the underpinning factors which shape the slum dwellers’ disclosing attitude. METHODS: In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted among 105 men and 113 women who experienced illness in the year prior to the study period. Respondents were selected from four urban slums in two Indian cities, Bangalore and Kolkata. RESULTS: Findings indicate that women have more confidants at different social levels, while men have a limited network of disclosures which is culturally and socially mediated. Gender role limitations, exclusion from peer groups and unsupportive local situations are the major cause of disclosure delay or non-disclosure among men, while the main concerns for women are a lack of proper knowledge about illness, unsupportive responses received from other people on certain occasions, the fear of social stigma, material loss and the burden of the local situation. Prompt sharing of illness among men is linked with prevention intention and coping with biological problems, whereas factors determining disclosure for women relate to ensuring emotional and instrumental safety, preventing collateral damage of illness, and preventing and managing biological complications. CONCLUSIONS: The findings reveal that patterns of disclosure are not determined by the acknowledgment of illness but largely depend on the interplay between individual agency, disclosure consequences and the socio cultural environment. The results of this study can contribute significantly to mitigating the pivotal knowledge gap between health policymakers, practitioners and patients, leading to the formulation of policies that maximise the utilisation of health facilities in slums. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-5771001 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2018 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-57710012018-01-25 Patterns of illness disclosure among Indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study Das, Moumita Angeli, Federica Krumeich, Anja J. S. M. van Schayck, Onno C. P. BMC Int Health Hum Rights Research Article BACKGROUND: Slum dwellers display specific traits when it comes to disclosing their illnesses to professionals. The resulting actions lead to poor health-seeking behaviour and underutilisation of existing formal health facilities. The ways that slum people use to communicate their feelings about illness, the type of confidants that they choose, and the supportive and unsupportive social and cultural interactions to which they are exposed have not yet been studied in the Indian context, which constitutes an important knowledge gap for Indian policymakers and practitioners alike. To that end, this study examines the patterns of illness disclosure in Indian slums and the underpinning factors which shape the slum dwellers’ disclosing attitude. METHODS: In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted among 105 men and 113 women who experienced illness in the year prior to the study period. Respondents were selected from four urban slums in two Indian cities, Bangalore and Kolkata. RESULTS: Findings indicate that women have more confidants at different social levels, while men have a limited network of disclosures which is culturally and socially mediated. Gender role limitations, exclusion from peer groups and unsupportive local situations are the major cause of disclosure delay or non-disclosure among men, while the main concerns for women are a lack of proper knowledge about illness, unsupportive responses received from other people on certain occasions, the fear of social stigma, material loss and the burden of the local situation. Prompt sharing of illness among men is linked with prevention intention and coping with biological problems, whereas factors determining disclosure for women relate to ensuring emotional and instrumental safety, preventing collateral damage of illness, and preventing and managing biological complications. CONCLUSIONS: The findings reveal that patterns of disclosure are not determined by the acknowledgment of illness but largely depend on the interplay between individual agency, disclosure consequences and the socio cultural environment. The results of this study can contribute significantly to mitigating the pivotal knowledge gap between health policymakers, practitioners and patients, leading to the formulation of policies that maximise the utilisation of health facilities in slums. BioMed Central 2018-01-16 /pmc/articles/PMC5771001/ /pubmed/29338708 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-018-0142-x Text en © The Author(s). 2018 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Das, Moumita Angeli, Federica Krumeich, Anja J. S. M. van Schayck, Onno C. P. Patterns of illness disclosure among Indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study |
title | Patterns of illness disclosure among Indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study |
title_full | Patterns of illness disclosure among Indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study |
title_fullStr | Patterns of illness disclosure among Indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study |
title_full_unstemmed | Patterns of illness disclosure among Indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study |
title_short | Patterns of illness disclosure among Indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study |
title_sort | patterns of illness disclosure among indian slum dwellers: a qualitative study |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5771001/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29338708 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12914-018-0142-x |
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