LAUSR

Abstract Aims Women show higher frequency of most painful disorders. This is usually explained that endogenous pain modulation pathways, which affect incoming nociceptive signals, act differently in women and men, but psycho-social factors are likelytoinfluence as well. Ghanaian women suffer different disabilities that may lead to severe pain. The hard climatic conditions and the hard physical toil in work exert untold injuries. How do women in Ghana cope with painful disorders, and do they show certain behavioural pattern during diagnosis and treatments? Methods The study used in-depth interviews with health care providers to accomplish its aim. The “snowball effect” was added by which those interviewed aided us to find other prospective interviewee. In qualitative methodology, such an approach can be adopted to enable the researcher acquire relevant data with help from respondents.Practitioners were askedtoreflectontheir experiences from meeting women with severe pain as their patients. Seven practitioners, four female and three male, were interviewed. Results By talking spontaneously about pain, women cope with painful disorders. This ensures easy diagnoses and treatments. The majority of women report their severe pain disabilities freely as against a smaller group who behave differently.The other group has explored other practitioners and have been unsuccessful. They are afraid to reveal their situations openly. Others test the skills of the practitioners whether they could perform efficient diagnoses. This strengthens patients’ faith and ability to be cured. In behavioural terms, inability to report severe pain stem from comorbid depressive symptoms (timidity-shyness, over-worried/confusion, distraction), lack of trust-expectant faith, thought of practitioner’s omniscient power, threat of practitioner’s knowledge (patient’s wrongs and evil thoughts), religious affiliation-constraints, etc. Women cope and show more positive attitudes than men; they expect practitioners to be in careful control. Conclusions Ghanaian women deal with their severe pains in meaningful manner by talking spontaneously about them. They show their willingness to be helped during diagnosis. Only few patients are not spontaneous, and are due to the condition of the mind and uncertainty with previous treatment encounters.