Estrategias de afrontamiento en personas con HANSEN y su relación con la calidad de vida.

Abstract

Hansen's disease or better known as Leprosy is a contagious infectious disease that not only affects the physical health of people, but also affects their mental health since, in each era there is a social construction of this disease based on beliefs and social fears, harming not only the patient but their way of perceiving life in the face of negative assessments; being a disease that represents particular and visible bodily manifestations, it can be located in the physical stigmas and in turn in the moral stigmas. From this, it was considered necessary to know the state of the mental health of the patients seeing this as the direct contact with their relatives and the professionals who accompany them in the diagnosis and treatment of the disease, being this relationship of vital importance in the development of the present research, since, it was intended to know the different coping strategies used by the patients and how these are related to their quality of life. This was done with a mixed type study with qualitative predominance and exploratory design, with the participation of 9 adults diagnosed with Hansen's disease, belonging to the Sanatorio Empresa Social del Estado E. S. E., two professionals and two family caregivers. Finally, in order to meet the proposed objectives, two strategies were implemented for data collection, an in-depth interview and the Modified Coping Strategies Scale (EEC-M), which helped to identify the strategies most used by the participating population, from the findings it was possible to characterize the coping strategies that favored the process experienced by patients.