title: Resilience and treatment adhesion in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (SLE) is a chronic autoimmune, rheumatic inflammatory disease that can cause significant morbidity with evident psychological impacts and obvious harm to quality-of-life that require the patient to adapt treatment.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Assessment of resilience and the self-reported treatment adhesion behaviors of patients with SLE, investigating which of these factors are associated to resilience.
  
  
  METHODS
  Cross-sectional study of 40 women with SLE. A questionnaire with social demographic data, health history and the Wagnild Young Resilience Scale were used.
  
  
  RESULTS
  62.5% followed the medical treatment properly but 55% found it difficult. 27.5% of the patients presented low resilience, 57.5% medium and 15% high resilience. Resilience was associated in the chi-square test (p-value < 0.05) with the variables work, understanding SLE, trying to find out about SLE, following the treatment correctly, difficulty in following the treatment and stopping some activity because of the disease. In the correlation analysis, resilience was associated with age (-0.3960), number of working hours (0.5533), specialized treatment duration (-0.8103) and disease duration from diagnosis (-0.8014).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Patients with high resilience tended to follow treatment correctly, tried to understand the disease and adhered more to the treatment to avoid risks and promote protection factors. Therefore knowledge of resilience in patients with SLE is necessary. It is important that the state takes necessary actions to facilitate access to treatment, to educational programs and to medical support. Awareness and counselling sessions must be initiated to develop and promote individual capacities to learn how to tackle with the disease for which psychological support of family and doctors can play a significant role.
authors.affiliation: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Natal, Brazil.
authors.forename: Daniella Antunes Pousa
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Faria
authors.affiliation: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Natal, Brazil.
authors.forename: Luciana Silva
authors.initials: LS
authors.lastname: Revoredo
authors.affiliation: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Natal, Brazil.
authors.forename: Maria José
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Vilar
authors.affiliation: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciências da Saúde, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte (UFRN), Natal, Brazil ; Programa de Pós-Graduação em Psicologia, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, Brazil.
authors.forename: Maia
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Eulália Maria Chaves
keywords: Resilience; systemic lupus erythematosus.; treatment adhesion