Biomedical subjects

Gerry Kent

Publications and source records attributed to Gerry Kent.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Adolescents' views of helping professionals: a review of the literature.

This paper reviews 54 papers exploring adolescents' own views of their interactions with doctors, mental health workers and other 'helping professionals'. Twelve global themes emerge repeatedly in the qualitative literature, where adolescents are asked to talk about their preferences or their experiences of receiving help from such professionals. The twelve themes are reported and illustrated with results of related quantitative studies, and implications of these themes for professionals offering services to this age group are considered. Methodological limitations of the literature are discussed, along with suggestions for future research.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2005

Trying to do my best as a mother: decision-making in families of children undergoing elective surgical treatment for short stature.

OBJECTIVES: To explore how families make decisions about elective leg-lengthening surgical treatment. DESIGN: Interviews were conducted and analysed using Interpretative Phenomeno logical Analysis (Smith, 1995). METHODS: Data were gathered using semi-structured interviews with nine mothers of children who had recently decided to undergo treatment. RESULTS: Overall, the decision process was guided by the mothers' central concern to act responsibly as a parent. Thematic analysis indicated that the decision was taken in a social context where short stature could lead to discrimination and disability. The decision-making process evolved gradually over several years as mothers and children gathered information about treatment. While mothers emphasized that ultimately it was their child's decision, they monitored the decision process and filtered the information available in an attempt to ensure that the child made a well-informed and wise choice. CONCLUSIONS: The decision was presented as an ongoing process by the mothers, their concerns representing their desire to do their best as parents for their children. Theoretically, the mothers' description of the process can be understood in terms of their attempts to resolve an ethical dilemma. Clinical implications include recognition of the role of the psychologist in supporting mothers in their decision making and thus indirectly helping children.

Adolescent↗

PubMed2002

Living with vitiligo: dealing with difference.

OBJECTIVES: Individuals with a disfigurement are at risk of experiencing psychological distress, but the level of this distress is only marginally associated with clinical severity. This study examines the experience of living with the skin condition vitiligo with a view towards understanding its impact and the ways in which participants deal with this chronic and disfiguring disease. DESIGN: The qualitative method Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis was used. METHODS: In a semi-structured interview, seven white female vitiligo sufferers were asked to describe their experiences from the time the vitiligo first became apparent to the time of the interview. They were encouraged to elaborate on their own reactions and how they dealt with the reactions of others. RESULTS: Initially, participants felt overwhelmed by their illness but over time they developed several strategies in order to 'contain' their difference in appearance within manageable limits. The behavioural strategies of avoidance and concealment had several disadvantages, whereas cognitive strategies were less problematic but difficult to sustain consistently. Social support served to facilitate the development of coping methods associated with acceptance of difference. However, maintaining this acceptance was a struggle and the process fragile. CONCLUSIONS: Living with vitiligo was a continuous struggle. The results are consistent with Leventhal's (1970) notion that coping is a problem-solving process and with Moos and Schaefer's (1984) contention that dealing with a chronic disease involves the development of a variety of strategies in order to regain equilibrium. Further research is needed to examine whether the experiences described here are common to other disfiguring conditions.

Journal Article↗

PubMed1985

Memory of dental pain.

The possibility that patients' memory for acute pain is reconstructed over time was tested by comparing the degree of pain remembered 3 months after a dental appointment with both expected and experienced pain, as reported immediately before and after the appointment. As hypothesised, there was a closer association between remembered and expected pain than between remembered and experienced pain, particularly for those patients who scored high on the Dental Anxiety Scale. These results suggest that the accuracy of patients' reports of pain experienced in the past may be suspect, and that dental anxiety may be slow to extinguish because the discrepancy between expected and experienced pain felt at one appointment may not be recalled accurately by anxious patients at their next appointment.

Adolescent↗