[Illness experience and treatment seeking behavior of psoriasis patients]

We analyzed how psoriasis patients sought professional help and correlated it to their illness attitudes and feeling of stigmatization. Semi-structured interviews of 400 patients were reanalyzed to identify homogeneous groups concerning initial reactions at first manifestations of the disease. Four groups ("isolated", "stigmatized", "socially supported" and "non-stigmatized" patients) were found and cross-tabulated with five resulting groups of a second cluster-analysis concerning the "style" of the seeking behaviour of professional and paraprofessional help and medical measures against the psoriasis ("multi-users", "arranged mini-users", "waiting-room patients", "optimists" and "self-therapists"). We were able to describe typical courses of illness behaviour depending on the initial reaction. The results are discussed with regard to the desirable identification of problematic patients within professional care units.