Gastrointestinal symptoms in abused nonpatient women

Background Severely abused nonpatient women report a high number of gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms and GI syndromes. Little is known about whether the abuse-symptom relationship varies across different life, social, and community conditions. Objective To comparatively assess the timing, type and severity of physical and/or sexual abuse and GI symptoms of nonpatient women who contacted a lawyer for legal support with those who sought shelter in antiviolence centers. Subjects and methods Forty-six lawyer controls (LCs) (aged 29-80 years) and 67 women (aged 18-58 years) sheltered in antiviolence (V) centers completed an identical anonymous questionnaire with medical and abuse sections. The severity of abuse was assessed with the 0-6 Abuse Severity Measure (ASM). The associations between abuse characteristics and the number of symptoms were assessed with the Poisson regression model. Results Among the LC women, 65% experienced physical and/or sexual abuse in childhood and/or adulthood, whereas 100% of the V women did. In both groups, most women experienced combined sexual and physical abuse in childhood and adulthood. The ASM was < 2 in 57% of the LC and 18% of the V women. LC and V women reported an average of 4.9 and 4.6 GI symptoms, respectively. In both groups, women who had been both sexually and physically abused reported a greater number of GI symptoms. Childhood and adulthood abuse were associated with more GI symptoms only in V women. LC women with ASM > 2 reported more GI symptoms than those with an ASM of < 2 (median; IQR: 6.5; 3-11 vs 3; 1-7, p = 0.002). V women with ASM > 5 reported significantly more GI symptoms than control women with ASM < 5 (median; IQR: 6; 4-8 vs 4.5; 2-8, p < 0.001). Conclusions In abused "nonpatient" women, the combination of physical and sexual abuse, childhood and adulthood abuse and higher severity scores were associated with a greater number of GI symptoms, irrespective of the social and economic setting

Collaborating with elderly end users in the design process

Chapter 20The fact that end-users can participate and contribute to the design process, was pointed out in previous studies on user participation to the design process conducted by Cavanagh (1996), Ciccantelli and Magidson (1993), Mitchell (1995), Morini and Pomposini (1996), and Reich et al (1996). For Howes, et al (1998), participatory design is a design methodology, European in origin, giving an important contributory role to the end-user in the development of products they would eventually use. This paper presents a study (Demirbilek, 1999) in which elderly end-users were invovled in the design process by means of participatory design sessions. In these sessions, the expertise of designers and the comments and ideas of elderly end-users were applied to how doors and door handles for domestic use should be designed. Two different design sessions were run for each group of elderly end-users

High prevalence of symptoms in a severely abused "non-patient" women population

The objective of this article is to assess the prevalence of somatic symptoms and of gastrointestinal (GI) syndromes in abused "non-patient" women and the association with the time of perpetration, type, and severity of abuse