Delivery of e-psychology services to women with fibromyalgia syndrome: Campaign to improve self-esteem.

摘要

Patients with invisible chronic illnesses such as fibromyalgia often experience negative effects on their self-esteem while they attempt to cope with the disorders. Health psychologists are beginning to understand how self-esteem and illness states interact and are developing educational interventions to assist these patients. The Internet provided an effective medium for distributing patient educational materials as innovative means for delivering psychological health care. This study utilized streaming video, weekly online forums and diary entries to assess the effectiveness of technology interventions for teaching patients with fibromyalgia syndrome methods to improve self-esteem. To summarize the methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted via telephone before and after the study to determine if the electronic psychological interventions are effective. The Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale was used to provide quantitative verification of interpretive phenomenological findings with paired t-tests demonstrating significant improvement with the intervention ( p 0.01). Mixed methods analysis yielded insights about the experiences of the participants through the interventions.