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Journal ArticleDOI

Who talks? The social psychology of illness support groups.

01 Jan 2000-American Psychologist (American Psychological Association)-Vol. 55, Iss: 2, pp 205-217
TL;DR: Support seeking was highest for diseases viewed as stigmatizing and was lowest for less embarrassing but equally devastating disorders, such as heart disease, and implications for social comparison theory and its applications in health care are discussed.
Abstract: More Americans try to change their health behaviors through self-help than through all other forms of professionally designed programs. Mutual support groups, involving little or no cost to participants, have a powerful effect on mental and physical health, yet little is known about patterns of support group participation in health care. What kinds of illness experiences prompt patients to seek each other's company? In an effort to observe social comparison processes with real-world relevance, support group participation was measured for 20 disease categories in 4 metropolitan areas (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Dallas) and on 2 on-line forums. Support seeking was highest for diseases viewed as stigmatizing (e.g., AIDS, alcoholism, breast and prostate cancer) and was lowest for less embarrassing but equally devastating disorders, such as heart disease. The authors discuss implications for social comparison theory and its applications in health care.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: A positive impact of online social support on the overall wellbeing of unwed single mothers in China is highlighted, which not only enhanced self-esteem and promoted individual empowerment, but also raised group consciousness and created a bond and a sense of belonging to an online community.

20 citations


Cites background from "Who talks? The social psychology of..."

  • ...Some social support scholars also acknowledge the difficulties of assessing the effectiveness of online support groups (Davison et al., 2000) due to different focus of desired measurement (Barack et al., 2008)....

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01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the effect of identity management on the fysieke and mentale welzijn of mensen with degeneratieve oogaandoening.
Abstract: Mensen met een gestigmatiseerde identiteit hebben een verhoogd risico om gediscrimineerd te worden of met vooroordelen te maken te krijgen. Stigma theorie leert ons dat individuen er voor kunnen kiezen om deze identiteit geheim te houden om dergelijke gevolgen te vermijden. De mate waarin, alsmede de manier waarop, een persoon met een gestigmatiseerde identiteit ervoor kiest om deze identiteit voor de omgeving te verbergen staat bekend als identity management. In dit proefschrift kijken we naar de gestigmatiseerde groep van mensen met een degeneratieve oogaandoening. Het eerste doel van dit onderzoek is om de uitdagingen en successen waarmee volwassenen met deze aandoening te maken krijgen te analyseren in relatie tot hun gestigmatiseerde identiteit en identity management. Ook is onderzocht hoe het verbergen van een visuele beperking zowel de gevolgde carrierepaden als het algehele welzijn van het individu beinvloedt. Het tweede doel van dit proefschrift is om inzicht te verkrijgen in de contacten tussen individuen met degeneratieve oogaandoeningen. De resultaten van het onderzoek suggereren dat identity management een belangrijke rol speelt in het fysieke en mentale welzijn, alsmede de carrierekansen, van deze groep mensen. De mate waarin de gestigmatiseerde identiteit onthuld wordt is ook van groot belang voor het welzijn en de carrierekansen van het individu. Zo kan het gedeeltelijk onthullen van de identiteit samengaan met stress en een gebrek aan zelfacceptatie. Beleidsmakers zouden oplossingen moeten vinden om een veilige werkomgeving te creeren voor individuen die hun aandoening niet (volledig) willen onthullen op het werk.

20 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The findings suggest that men are willing to attend support groups that focus on solving problems and that social supports help men improve continence and quality of life.
Abstract: Twenty-nine incontinent prostate cancer patients learned Pelvic Floor Muscle Exercises through biofeedback and were randomly assigned to a control group or a support group entailing six meetings over 3 months. The obtained consent rate (50%) is much higher than the previously reported rate for men (13%). The reasons for refusal were mainly due to actual barriers (48%) and less frequently due to psychological concerns (10.3%). Most support group participants (71.5%) attended five to six group meetings. The findings suggest that men are willing to attend support groups that focus on solving problems and that social supports help men improve continence and quality of life.

20 citations


Cites background from "Who talks? The social psychology of..."

  • ...Based on this theory, some believe that issues that are potentially embarrassing or stigmatizing can discourage people from seeking social support or affiliation; on the other hand, others argue that embarrassment increases one’s level of anxiety and compels people to seek support (Davison et al., 2000)....

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  • ...…on this theory, some believe that issues that are potentially embarrassing or stigmatizing can discourage people from seeking social support or affiliation; on the other hand, others argue that embarrassment increases one’s level of anxiety and compels people to seek support (Davison et al., 2000)....

    [...]

  • ...Despite the fact that diseases affect men and women equally, men are less likely than women to participate in support groups (Davison et al., 2000)....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The findings suggest that opinion leaders obtained psychosocial health benefits, such as higher levels of cancer information competence, breast cancer knowledge, and better problem-focused coping strategies.
Abstract: With a focus on the nature and dynamic process of social interactions among breast cancer patients, this study argues that the notion of opinion leaders can be another crucial factor in explaining positive psychosocial health outcomes within computer-mediated social support (CMSS) groups. This study investigates the relationship between opinion leaders and their psychosocial health benefits by considering two overarching questions: (a) Who are the opinion leaders? (b) What role do these opinion leaders play in explaining health outcomes? The data analyzed in this study resulted from merging human-coded content analysis of discussion group messages, action log data analysis of interactive health system usage, and longitudinal survey data. Surveys were administered to 221 women with breast cancer; participants were provided free access to and training for the CMSS groups developed by the Comprehensive Health Support System (CHESS) project. The findings suggest that opinion leaders obtained psychosoc...

19 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The conceptualization for developing technology based preventive models for primary care by integrating the components within a behavioral vaccine framework is described.

19 citations


Cites methods from "Who talks? The social psychology of..."

  • ...The teen stories were based on vicarious learning theory and were included to facilitate adaptive learning/behavior change that occurs in self-help groups (Davison et al., 2000; Gagne et al., 1992)....

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References
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Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the authors pointed out that there is a strong functional tie between opinions and abilities in humans and that the ability evaluation of an individual can be expressed as a comparison of the performance of a particular ability with other abilities.
Abstract: Hypothesis I: There exists, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and his abilities. While opinions and abilities may, at first glance, seem to be quite different things, there is a close functional tie between them. They act together in the manner in which they affect behavior. A person’s cognition (his opinions and beliefs) about the situation in which he exists and his appraisals of what he is capable of doing (his evaluation of his abilities) will together have bearing on his behavior. The holding of incorrect opinions and/or inaccurate appraisals of one’s abilities can be punishing or even fatal in many situations. It is necessary, before we proceed, to clarify the distinction between opinions and evaluations of abilities since at first glance it may seem that one’s evaluation of one’s own ability is an opinion about it. Abilities are of course manifested only through performance which is assumed to depend upon the particular ability. The clarity of the manifestation or performance can vary from instances where there is no clear ordering criterion of the ability to instances where the performance which reflects the ability can be clearly ordered. In the former case, the evaluation of the ability does function like other opinions which are not directly testable in “objective reality’. For example, a person’s evaluation of his ability to write poetry will depend to a large extent on the opinions which others have of his ability to write poetry. In cases where the criterion is unambiguous and can be clearly ordered, this furnishes an objective reality for the evaluation of one’s ability so that it depends less on the opinions of other persons and depends more on actual comparison of one’s performance with the performance of others. Thus, if a person evaluates his running ability, he will do so by comparing his time to run some distance with the times that other persons have taken. In the following pages, when we talk about evaluating an ability, we shall mean specifically the evaluation of that ability in situations where the performance is unambiguous and is known. Most situations in real life will, of course, present situations which are a mixture of opinion and ability evaluation. In a previous article (7) the author posited the existence of a drive to determine whether or not one’s opinions were “correct”. We are here stating that this same drive also produces behavior in people oriented toward obtaining an accurate appraisal of their abilities. The behavioral implication of the existence of such a drive is that we would expect to observe behaviour on the part of persons which enables them to ascertain whether or not their opinions are correct and also behavior which enables them accurately to evaluate their abilities. It is consequently

16,927 citations

Book
01 Jan 1878
TL;DR: The Red River of the North basin of the Philippines was considered a part of the Louisiana Purchase by the United States Department of Commerce in the 1939 Census Atlas of the United Philippines as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: 1 Includes drainage basin of Red River of the North, not a part of any accession, but in the past sometimes considered a part of the Louisiana Purchase. i Includes Baker, Canton, Enderbury, Rowland, Jarvis, Johnston, and Midway Islands; and also certain other outlying islands (21 square miles). 3 Commonwealth of the Philippines, Commission of the Census; 1939 Census, Census Atlas of the Philippines. Source: Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census.

10,650 citations

Book
01 Jan 1970
TL;DR: Yalom as mentioned in this paper described the course of therapy from both the patient's and the therapist's viewpoint in Encounter Groups: First Facts (1973) and Every Day gets a Little Closer: A Twice-Told Therapy (1974).
Abstract: This book first appeared in 1970 and has gone into two further editions, one in 1975 and this one in 1985. Yalom is also the author of Existential Psychotherapy (1980), In-patient Group Psychotherapy (1983), the co-author with Lieberman of Encounter Groups: First Facts (1973) and with Elkin of Every Day Gets a Little Closer: A Twice-Told Therapy (1974) (which recounts the course of therapy from the patient's and the therapist's viewpoint). The present book is the central work of the set and seems to me the most substantial. It is also one of the most readable of his works because of its straightforward style and the liberal use of clinical examples.

4,235 citations


"Who talks? The social psychology of..." refers background in this paper

  • ...In a similar vein, Yalom (1995) has asserted that self-help groups offer a unique venue for growth, social experimentation, and change....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants' communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness.
Abstract: The Internet could change the lives of average citizens as much as did the telephone in the early part of the 20th century and television in the 1950s and 1960s. Researchers and social critics are debating whether the Internet is improving or harming participation in community life and social relationships. This research examined the social and psychological impact of the Internet on 169 people in 73 households during their first 1 to 2 years on-line. We used longitudinal data to examine the effects of the Internet on social involvement and psychological well-being. In this sample, the Internet was used extensively for communication. Nonetheless, greater use of the Internet was associated with declines in participants' communication with family members in the household, declines in the size of their social circle, and increases in their depression and loneliness. These findings have implications for research, for public policy and for the design of technology.

4,091 citations