Managing everyday life: Self-management strategies people use to live well with neurological conditions.

Objective: This paper uses the Taxonomy of Everyday Self-management Strategies (TEDSS) to provide insight and understanding into the complex and interdependent self-management strategies people with neurological conditions use to manage everyday life.
Methods: As part of a national Canadian study, structured telephone interviews were conducted monthly for eleven months, with 117 people living with one or more neurological conditions. Answers to five open-ended questions were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. A total of 7236 statements were analyzed.
Results: Findings are presented in two overarching patterns: 1) self-management pervades all aspects of life, and 2) self-management is a chain of decisions and behaviours. Participants emphasized management of daily activities and social relationships as important to maintaining meaning in their lives.
Conclusion: Managing everyday life with a neurological condition includes a wide range of diverse strategies that often interact and complement each other. Some people need to intentionally manage every aspect of everyday life.
Practice Implications: For people living with neurological conditions, there is a need for health providers and systems to go beyond standard advice for self-management. Self-management support is best tailored to each individual, their life context and the realities of their illness trajectory.
Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest This article is part of a research project regarding self-management among people with complex and/or multiple long term conditions. The TEDSS Framework is used as a way to understand self-management in several articles. The authors have no financial conflicts of interest.
(Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)