Abstract
Self-management programs have been introduced in order to help chronic patients better manage their symptoms, treatments, and the physical, as well as the psychosocial consequences and lifestyle changes inherent in living with a chronic condition. As many chronic patients tend to also suffer from mental health issues, such as depression and anxiety, coping resources and constructive coping strat-egies can also help them improve their psychological health, which in turn can help them improve their quality of life. Information technologies can provide useful opportunities for improving the self-management support that are provided to chronic illnesses such as asthma, especially when they can be integrated with patients’ ongoing medical care and by enabling the patients to also better cope with mental health issues. The present paper describes an exploratory study that studied 17 asthma patients who used a self-management system and examined if and how the system also helped them cope with the negative emotions evoked by their disease. Adopting a coping theory perspective, the paper identi-fied several coping responses that the studied self-management system seemed to support, and developing future self-management systems so that they can also support these coping responses can be useful for improving the health of chronically ill patients.
Recommended Citation
Savoli, Azadeh and Barki, Henri, "The Effect of Self-management Systems on Coping with Stress and Anxiety in Chronic Patients" (2018). MCIS 2018 Proceedings. 8.
https://aisel.aisnet.org/mcis2018/8