Psychology Commons^™

Illness Perceptions Of Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, Elizabeth Baker

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a chronic illness that affects approximately five million premenopausal women in the United States and is associated with significant cosmetic, reproductive, metabolic, and psychological consequences. Despite its prevalence, few studies have explored the lived experiences and illness perceptions of women living with PCOS. Identifying illness perceptions of women living with (WLW) PCOS is important, because mounting research suggests that a person's perceptions of their chronic illness and its management determine that person's coping behaviors (e.g., adherence, self-management) and, consequently, illness outcomes.

In this dissertation, the Common Sense Model (CSM) is used as a framework to …

Blogging Chronic Illness And Negotiating Patient-Hood: Online Narratives Of Women With Ms, Collette Sosnowy

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Personal narratives about women's everyday lives with chronic illness are mapped onto the landscape of social media through blogging. Social media is facilitating an already-existing shift in patients' roles as they are increasingly enabled and expected to self-educate themselves about their illness, collaborate with providers, self-manage their care, and engage in health activism. The health care industry has seized on the widespread use of social media to bolster rhetoric that the accelerated knowledge development made possible through social media has the potential to revolutionize the practice of medicine. Critics, however, argue that responsibility and activism via digital technologies has become …