Teaching plus support equals self-help
People learn skills for managing diseases
Rather than organize an on-going support group, staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta are testing self-help groups that run for a limited amount of time, providing both support and education. Their goal is to provide participants with the tools to better self-manage their disease.
The first half of each session is used to educate participants and distribute information, and the second half is devoted to questions, discussions, and support. "By providing education and information as well as emotional and spiritual support, we hope to increase awareness, promote self-esteem, and improve quality of life," says Melanie Schleicher, MS, manager of the Communication and Swallowing Disorders Department at the hospital and chair of the committee that created the stroke self-help group.
The committee spent six months planning the group format and interviewing many stroke survivors and their families before creating the curriculum.
Topics covered during the six-week course include coping with emotional changes and depression after a stroke, managing speech and swallowing problems, traveling with a disability, and current advances in stroke prevention. The instructors include a nurse, nutritionist, physician, chaplain, psychologist, social worker, physical therapist, occupational therapist, and speech pathologist. Each weekly session lasts an hour and a half, and a psychologist heads a discussion after the education portion.
Such education provides stroke survivors with new information and resources, something people facing a difficult problem always need. Also, it helps promote social interaction. "If people are feeling shy or intimidated or unsure of how to present themselves, then having a psycho-educational portion gets the ball rolling. Ideally, you would do psycho-educational support and interweave that with people getting to know each other and aiding each other," says Elizabeth Carson, PhD, staff psychologist at St. Joseph’s and the facilitator for the stroke self-help group.
It is important to allow participants to bring up topics that haven’t been part of the educational component, says Carson. To cut down on the number of questions and provide more time for group discussion, participants are given educational materials so they can review the information at home.
A second self-help course at St. Joseph’s targets people with fibromyalgia. The hospital obtained the curriculum for this course from the Atlanta-based Arthritis Foundation. The seven-week course is held once a week for 21¼2 hours and offers an educational component followed by a discussion. Topics covered in the course target the unique problems and symptoms of people with fibromyalgia. They include coping with fatigue and energy conservation, sleep problems and solutions, pain management, and exercise.
Participants set goals
Unique to the course is a goal-setting component. At each session, participants create a goal to accomplish during the week, says Kay Starnes, LMT, massage therapist and head of the fibromyalgia program at St. Joseph’s. For example, because exercise is painful for people who suffer from fibromyalgia, many people with the ailment are very physically unfit. A participant might set a goal to walk for 15 minutes three times a week. "The object is for each person to do more to help their condition," says Starnes.
Starnes, who has coped with fibromyalgia for eight years, was trained by the Arthritis Foundation to lead the course. Participants pay $55, which covers the costs of materials provided by the Arthritis Foundation. Materials run about $10 per person. There is no charge for the stroke self-help group.
[Editor’s note: To obtain more information on how to train as an instructor for the fibromyalgia self-help course, contact your local chapter of the Arthritis Foundation or write: Arthritis Foundation, National Office, 1330 West Peachtree Street, Atlanta, GA 30309. Telephone: (404) 872-7100. The fee for the course and its availability may vary by location.]
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