Evaluations of the quality of life and healthcare needs of stroke patients with psychiatric versus physiological health outcomes
Jay Krizan
Project Description
My project encompasses an investigation into empathy for patients based on whether their health conditions are physiological (embodied) or psychiatric (mental) in nature. To make this comparison, I provided survey participants with a series of scenarios describing patients who had all had strokes, but whose strokes varied in severity (severe/mild) and outcome (physiological/psychiatric). Although participants correctly perceived severe strokes as severe and mild ones as mild, they attributed lower necessity of treatment, distress, and impacts on quality of life from strokes which resulted in psychiatric symptoms. This study has inspired a follow-up which has been run with the intent of publishing both together. The follow-up study compares health symptoms with variable (physiological/psychiatric) etiologies, so as to reinforce the notion that a devaluation of psychiatric disability is at the core of the observed effects.
What Form will your Final Project Take?
Paper, follow-up study
Who was supporting you in your work?
Katrina Fincher. My mentor and I met weekly to consult on study design, analysis, and write-ups. She will be listed as the main author of this study when we pursue publication for it with my follow-up.
Project Themes:
Research, Social Justice
How has this project has been impactful or transformative?
As someone who identifies as disabled, and who has multiple invisible disabilities, it was very vindicating to achieve the results that I did when conducting this study. Not only was my hypothesis correct, which is obviously incredibly satisfying, but my data has validated (with a surprising level of statistical significance) what I have known myself to be true about psychological disabilities of all forms, which is that people just don't take them as seriously as they are. My results demonstrate that, even if someone can be convinced that a condition is serious, if it is psychiatric in nature then it simply won't be considered as serious as one that is physical/embodied. Having clinical health conditions that are both embodied and psychiatric, I have always known firsthand that the latter almost always feels worse than the former, and has a greater impact on my quality of life, but it has never been seen as such by my peers, parents, or healthcare professionals. This research had been incredibly validating for this reason, and I hope it does the same for people with experiences like mine.
What would you do differently?
Start earlier! I absolutely dedicated my heart and soul to this project, after only really getting started in January of this year. I managed to do a lot in only a semester, but it was very draining. The payoff is great, but I don't think it would be any less if I had been more responsible about planning and pacing myself. Ideally this would've taken an entire academic year at least, and not four-ish months!
Short summary of your experience:
I engaged in incredibly fulfilling, exhausting, and ambitious survey research which seemingly has good chances of getting published. I am thrilled, but cannot stress enough how exhausted I am.
