Identity and chronic illness: A biopsychosocial analysis of the illness integration continuum (FWOAL743)

Up to 20% of adolescents have a chronic illness and many struggle with lifestyle changes and treatment adherence. Chronic illness poses major challenges to these youngsters in the transition to adulthood because they have to reconcile the illness with their identity. However, an overarching framework of illness identity (or the degree to which chronic illness is integrated into one’s elfdefinition) is lacking. The present project bridges different sociological, psychological, and health perspectives and introduces the illness integration continuum consisting of four illness identity resolutions: rejection (i.e., chronic illness is rejected as part of one’s identity and is viewed as being unacceptable to the self), engulfment (i.e., individuals completely define themselves in terms of their illness and the illness pervades all domains of life), acceptance (i.e., individuals integrate the illness as part of their self-definition, without feeling reduced to being a sick person), and nrichment (i.e., having a chronic illness enables them to grow as a person). In a series of longitudinal, diary, and qualitative studies on individuals with Type 1 diabetes and congenital heart disease, the present project examines how these illness identity resolutions (a) emerge and develop through adolescence and emerging adulthood, (b) are influenced by the social environment (i.e., parents and peers), and (c) play into clinical-biological parameters in addition to psychosocial ones.

Keywords:Cell Therapy, Prevention, Transplantation, Diagnostic Tests, Immunology, Cell Death and Survival, Islet Cell Pathology, Islet Cell Biology, Beta Cell Transplantation, Diabetes

Disciplines:Endocrinology, Immunology, Biochemistry and metabolism, Endocrinology and metabolic diseases, Laboratory medicine