title: Living with asthma: an analysis of patients' perspectives.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate asthmatic patients' perceptions of their disease.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study was done with the participation of 23 patients among the asthmatics whose progress is monitored regularly in a university hospital. Phenomenological methodology was used, and the first step was to determine the socio-demographic characteristics of the participants. Then, in order to determine their feelings and opinions on the subject of their asthma, each participant was asked to write a letter to answer the following question: "If asthma were a friend of yours, what would you like to say to it in a letter?" Data were analyzed using the continuous comparative method of Colaizzi (1978; "Psychological research as a phenomenologist views it", in Valle, R. And King, M. (Eds), Existential Phenomenological Alternatives for Psychology, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.). For this purpose, each researcher read the letters separately and identified the important thoughts, and similar statements were classified under the same theme groups.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The mean age of the patients was 41.43 ± 6.23 years, and 69.6% of them were female, 73.9% were married, 34.8% were primary school graduates, and 34.7% were civil servants (with no social security problems). The statements of the asthmatics in the study were grouped according to the following themes: "The Most Important Factor in Accepting Asthma Is Time," "It's So Hard to Be Asthmatic," "Being Asthmatic Means Understanding the Value of Life," "I Don't Like Asthma, so I Can't Make Friends with It," "Learning to Live with Asthma," "One Day I May Recover from Asthma," "Feeling Anger," and "Suffering from Continuous Worry and Fear."
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Asthmatic patients need psychosocial support since they believe that there is no certain treatment for asthma, and attacks are inevitable.
authors.affiliation: Department of Public Health Nursing, Antalya School of Health, Akdeniz University, Antalya, Turkey. oselma@akdeniz.edu.tr
authors.forename: Selma
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Oncel
authors.forename: Zeynep Canlı
authors.initials: ZC
authors.lastname: Ozer
authors.forename: Mualla
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Yilmaz
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000786:Anger; D001007:Anxiety; D001249:Asthma / Q000523:psychology*; D004644:Emotions; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011788:Quality of Life; D012649:Self Concept; D014421:Turkey; D055815:Young Adult