"Like a pickle that's been unpickled": Emotional, identity and behavioural transformations throughout hepatitis C treatment.

BACKGROUND

Little is known about the emotional experience and benefits of undertaking direct acting antiviral (DAA) treatment for hepatitis C. A better understanding of individual treatment outcomes can inform acceptable treatment delivery and promotion. We aimed to explore participant-perceived emotional benefits and transformations throughout DAA treatment among people who inject drugs, who were initiating treatment.

METHODS

Participants were recruited from either a community based clinical trial or community health clinics. Semi structured interviews were conducted with each participant before, during and following treatment. Interviews focussed on treatment perceptions, physical and mental wellbeing and modifiable health behaviours. Interviews were recorded, transcribed verbatim and thematically analysed. Participant and cohort matrices were produced to assess at which time point themes were present and whether themes changed or remained stable over time.

RESULTS

This paper presents analysis from 19 participants interviewed between 2017-2019. Most participants were male, with no or mild fibrosis. At baseline, all but one participant had injected drugs in the past month. Three themes relating to the emotional wellbeing and behaviour change described a common treatment experience; 'hopes for better wellbeing', 'lifting the weight' and 'closing the chapter'. Participants were hopeful treatment would improve their emotional wellbeing. Hopes were actualised during treatment as participants began to feel uncertainty and stress easing. Completing treatment improved some participants perceptions of self. Some participants consciously changed their injecting behaviours during treatment.

CONCLUSION

Undertaking and completing treatment was an emotionally and behaviourally transformative period. Participant perceived benefits should be used to inform how treatment benefit is conceptualised and how treatment is promoted in primary care settings.

Informations de copyright

Copyright: © 2022 Goutzamanis et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts

SG and DH have no competing interests to declare. JD and MH have received investigator-initiated research funding to their institution from Gilead Sciences, Abbvie, Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb. JD’s institution has received funding for consultancies from Gilead Sciences, Abbvie, and Merck. PH has received investigator-initiated research funding to his institution from Gilead Sciences and Abbvie. This does not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.