The hidden pandemic: a qualitative study on how middle-aged women make sense of managing their long COVID symptoms, 2023, Collier & Garip

ABSTRACT
Background:
A relapsing and remitting illness, long COVID can be challenging and debilitating. A person living with long COVID can feel like they are getting better and recovering only to relapse again. The aim of the research was to explore how non-hospitalized middle-aged women who contracted COVID in the first wave of the pandemic, from March 2020, are manag-ing their long COVID symptoms.

Participants and procedure:
A qualitative research study with an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach was used to explore how the wom-en made sense of managing their condition and health seeking behaviours. Participants were recruited from long COVID Facebook groups and semi-structured interviews were conducted remotely by Teams audio; these were digitally recorded and transcribed by hand with prior informed consent. Nine women were interviewed and four themes and eight sub-themes emerged from the data.

Results:
The four emerging themes were: inequality and inconsistent medical treatment; uncertainty and ambiguity of managing long COVID symptoms; managing other people’s expectations and perceptions of long COVID; and the changing identity. Overall, these results indicated a general mistrust in health care services to provide adequate support and individualized treatment plans leading women to self-advocacy and to seek alternative support and treatment.

Conclusions:
This study raised questions about the possible unfair treatment of women seeking medical attention for their long COVID symptoms; how ambiguous symptoms are misattributed to anxiety and discrimination from health care professionals con-tributes towards stigma. The study concludes with recommendations for service improvement such as the compassionate validation of patients’ pain and the use of evidence-based therapeutic practices such as mindfulness.

https://hpr.termedia.pl/The-hidden-...-women-make-sense-of-managing,169811,0,2.html

 

A lot of dense and ambiguous language here meaning that despite its pretend claims of intentions 'being better and genuine' it is disguising itself what its own intentions are aka then seems a Trojan horse really

But the following para, noting that its main reference is repeated throughout and includes Chalder being listed as an author ( https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.22.21254057v2 ) has made my mind up for me where its 'agenda' lies:

"Future research

Future research might focus on a longitudinal inquiry to explore the middle-aged women’s lived experiences of long COVID as they adapt to physical and psychological changes over a longer period of time. This inquiry could develop further targeted health interventions aimed at supporting the women and the long COVID community. From the analysis, acceptance of the diagnosis by significant others was highlighted as integral to validation and recovery and ongoing support and psychoeducation is required for others to care for those living with long COVID.

As long COVID is heterogenous, a key policy priority should therefore be to plan for the longer-term psychological and medical care of those living with long COVID (Evans et al., 2021). This would lead to providing evidence-based practice and individualised health and mental health treatment pathways if a collaborative approach is taken to develop care in partnership with those living with this illness (Evans et al., 2021). By understanding the holistic experiences of women living with long COVID we may be able to improve the management of illness and the provision of medical intervention."


That paper: https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.22.21254057v2
is titled: "Physical, cognitive and mental health impacts of COVID-19 following hospitalisation – a multi-centre prospective cohort study"

The 'Competing Interest' statement underneath it is: The authors have declared no competing interest.

The funding seems more complex than can work out. The listed sections in the abstract say UKRI and NIHR, but then the bigger section 'funding statement' talks about: "PHOSP-COVID is supported by a grant from the MRC-UK Research and Innovation and the Department of Health and Social Care through the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) rapid response panel to tackle COVID-19 (grant references: MR/V027859/1 and COV0319)Core funding was provided by NIHR Leicester Biomedical Research Centre to support the PHOSP-COVID coordination team and NIHR Biomedical Research Centres (BRCs), Clinical Research Facilities (CRF) and NIHR Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) and Translational Research Collaborations (TRCs) network across the country. The institutional funding that supports the outbreak labs that process the PHOSP samples NIHR Health Protection Research Unit (HPRU) in Emerging and Zoonotic Infections at University of Liverpool in partnership with Public Health England (PHE) and Liverpool Experimental Cancer Medicine Centre (grant reference: C18616/A25153) RAE* holds a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) clinician scientist fellowship (CS-2016-16-020). NJG holds a NIHR post-doctoral fellowship (PDF2017-10-052). JJ was supported by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Career Development Fellowship 209553/Z/17/Z] and by the NIHR University College London Hospital Biomedical Research Centre, UK. LVW was supported by a GSK / British Lung Foundation Chair in Respiratory Research (C17-1) The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and not necessarily those of the MRC, NIHR or the Department of Health and Social Care. No form of payment was given to anyone to produce the manuscript. All members of the writing group have completed and submitted the ICMJE Form for Disclosure of Potential Conflicts of Interest."

There is aready a thread on this Evans et al (2021) paper here: https://www.s4me.info/threads/physi...spective-cohort-study-2021-evans-et-al.19775/

 

It seems to me that authors making a point of using women in research papers just means the research is going to be a stitch-up. In other words women will be classified as mentally ill and the treatments suggested will be useless (e.g. mindfulness or CBT or anti-depressants).