Record Details

Lived experiences of couples in a relationship where one partner is diagnosed with a mental illness

Curationis

 
 
Field Value
 
Title Lived experiences of couples in a relationship where one partner is diagnosed with a mental illness
 
Creator Mokoena, Andile G. Poggenpoel, Marie Myburgh, Chris Temane, Annie
 
Subject Mental Health Nursing; Mental Health; Psychology; Personality Studies couples; lived experiences; mental illness; partners; relationship
Description Background: A partner with mental illness can be challenging in a couple’s relationship. Mental illness brings about disintegration in the relationship because the partner without mental illness takes on more responsibilities than before. The partner without mental illness can be subjected to multiple risks, including stress and burden of care. The lived experiences of couples in a relationship where one partner is diagnosed with a mental illness is an under-researched area of mental health.Objectives: To explore and describe the lived experiences of couples in a relationship where one partner is diagnosed with a mental illness.Method: A qualitative, descriptive, exploratory and contextual research design was utilised. A purposive sampling method was used to sample participants for this study. Five couples, where one partner was diagnosed with a mental illness, participated in the study. Ten in-depth, individual, phenomenological interviews were conducted to provide rich descriptions of the couples’ experiences. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. An independent coder assisted with the data analysis. A consensus discussion was held between the independent coder and the interviewing researcher to agree on the identified themes.Results: Four themes with categories emerged from the data analysis: couples experienced changed social roles in their relationship, emotional upheaval was experienced by the individual partners in the couple relationship, interpersonal distance was experienced in the couple’s relationship and a changed relationship with the self was experienced by the individual partners in the couple relationship.Conclusion: The results concluded that couples experienced that the presence of mental illness in their relationship adversely affects the relationship, thus emphasising the need to empower the couples dealing with challenges of being in a relationship where one partner is diagnosed with a mental illness.
 
Publisher AOSIS
 
Contributor The research was supported by the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Johannesburg through grants awarded to the researcher Leatitia Romero for language editing the manuscript
Date 2019-09-19
 
Type info:eu-repo/semantics/article info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion — Qualitative approach, Phenomenology
Format text/html application/epub+zip text/xml application/pdf
Identifier 10.4102/curationis.v42i1.2015
 
Source Curationis; Vol 42, No 1 (2019); 7 pages 2223-6279 0379-8577
 
Language eng
 
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The following web links (URLs) may trigger a file download or direct you to an alternative webpage to gain access to a publication file format of the published article:

https://curationis.org.za/index.php/curationis/article/view/2015/2588 https://curationis.org.za/index.php/curationis/article/view/2015/2587 https://curationis.org.za/index.php/curationis/article/view/2015/2589 https://curationis.org.za/index.php/curationis/article/view/2015/2586
 
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Rights Copyright (c) 2019 Andile G. Mokoena, Marie Poggenpoel, Chris Myburgh, Annie Temane https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
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