Anita Haahr
VIA University College, Denmark
Title: Coping with Parkinsons disease in everyday life: A metasynthesis
Biography
Biography: Anita Haahr
Abstract
Parkinson’s disease (PD) is the second most common chronic progressive neurodegenerative disease affecting more than 10 million people worldwide. The main features of PD are tremor, bradykinesia, rigidity and at the later stage, postural instability. As the disease progresses, non-motor symptoms such as neuropsychiatric symptoms, depression, anxiety, cognitive challenges, sleep disturbances and fatigue may also appear. Thus, living with PD strongly affects daily living and as the disease progresses, individuals living with PD may experience the disease as limiting on a daily basis, requiring the development of individual ways of coping with the disease to maintain an active everyday life. The aim of the study was to identify coping in daily life in individuals with PD as it is described in the existing literature, ultimately to be able to describe coping patterns and challenges, in order to uncover the needs of the individual living with PD, to support their efforts in managing daily life with the disease. In this presentation, we unfold the results of a literature review performed as a meta-ethnographic metasummary and metasynthesis. A thorough literature search was conducted and adhering to the JBI guidelines, eligible studies were assessed for quality. A total of 13 articles were included in the study. Preliminary results shows the overarching motivation for coping with PD to be “striving for normalcy” and “preserving the self” from before PD. These findings will be unfolded at the presentation.