Geraldine Foley, Virpi Timonen and Orla Hardiman
Trinity College Dublin, Ireland
Acceptance and decision making in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis from a life-course
perspective
Qualitative Health Research, 2013, Dec 13 doi:10.1177/1049732313516545
Abstract
Researchers have explored perceptions of health care services among people with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis
(ALS), but little is known about how and why people with ALS engage with services. We undertook a grounded
theory study to identify key psychosocial processes that underpin how and why people with ALS engage with
health care services. We conducted in-depth interviews with 34 participants sampled from the Irish ALS
population-based register. We found that age and life stage shaped participants’ decision making about care.
Participants in later life were more accepting of ALS and of death than young and middle-aged participants. Family
was the primary context to how participants engaged with services, and their decisions about care were shaped by
parenthood at different life stages. Health care professionals need to be attuned to the impact of life-course
trajectories and family relations on the decisions people with ALS make about their care.
Keywords
aging; families; grounded theory; health care, users’ experiences; illness and disease, life threatening / terminal;
palliative care; parenting
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Introduction
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as motor neurone disease (MND), is a hastily progressive disorder
of the central nervous system. ALS causes paralysis of limb, respiratory, and bulbar (articulation and swallowing)
muscles (Wijesekera & Leigh, 2009). Approximately 15% of the ALS population develop frontotemporal dementia
and 35% develop mild frontotemporal impairment (Phukan et al., 2012). People with ALS have an approximate life
expectancy of 2 to 4 years from symptom onset, but in many cases the remaining life span is much shorter than this
(Chio et al., 2009). Peak onset of ALS is in the early to mid-60s but a sizeable portion of people with ALS develop
the condition earlier in adulthood.
Clinical trials have been ongoing in the quest to develop and test disease-modifying treatments for ALS but
to date scientists have been unsuccessful in developing treatments to slow disease progression. Life-sustaining
interventions such as assisted ventilation have increased life expectancy beyond the natural course of the disease, but
the approach in ALS care has been palliative from the point of diagnosis (Oliver, Borasio, & Walsh, 2006). Health
care professionals have been challenged to adjust their approach away from a model of care focused on outcomes to
a model of clinical care that sustains and improves quality of life.
Researchers have investigated expectations of health care services among people with ALS (Hughes, Sinha,
Higginson, Down, & Leigh, 2005) and their satisfaction with specific domains of care (Gruis, Wren, & Huggins,
2011); however, despite mounting quantitative and qualitative studies in the field, researchers have not yet identified
key psychosocial processes that underpin how people with ALS engage with health care services (Foley, Timonen,
& Hardiman, 2012). Multiple factors including burden of care (Hirano, Yamazaki, Shimizu, Togari, & Bryce, 2006),
health status (Albert et al., 2009), and psychological well-being (Ganzini, Johnston, McFarland, Tolle, & Lee, 1998)
have influenced ALS service users’ preferences for care, but little is known about how and why people with ALS
engage with health care services.
Researchers have explored the meaning of living with ALS (Brown & Addington-Hall, 2008; Locock,
Ziebland, & Dumelow, 2009) and found that people with ALS encountered change in their biographical trajectories
but also managed to adapt to illness by reappraising life situations. People with ALS also shifted their focus from
health issues to supportive relationships as they advanced in the disease, and severity of illness had little impact on
what they found most meaningful in their lives (Fegg et al., 2010). Qualitative researchers have described how
people with chronic neurological disorders cope with changing health (Boeije, Duijnstee, Grypdonck, & Pool, 2002;
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Gisquet, 2008), but there has been a dearth of literature on how people with terminal neurological disorders
construct their trajectories as they engage with health care services.
From our experiences as health care professionals in the field (first and third authors), we found that people
with ALS expected to receive health care services but they also negotiated between accepting and declining these
services as they moved toward death. We held the assumption that their health care experiences are shaped by a
range of salient contextual factors embedded in the social structure of their lives. We also held the assumption that
they construct their trajectories as they connect with others. In our research, therefore, we sought to unearth
psychosocial processes that explain how people with ALS engage with health care services, and in doing so, to be
able to apply our findings to other contexts.
The life-course perspective is a sociological framework for analyzing how social contexts and interactions
shape people’s lives over time (Hendricks, 2012). Their lives comprise a set of events, transitions, and trajectories
and as they age, these transitions and trajectories are shaped by age-differentiated roles (Alwin, 2012). Aging is
more than a biological process or chronological marker. Individuals attach different meanings to different life stages
(e.g., childhood, adulthood, and later life), and different stages of life are characterized by change in their roles
(Hendricks). People are linked across family generations, and their trajectories and transitions are shaped by family
(Macmillan & Copher, 2005).
Researchers have reported on the influence of aging and life stage on people’s perceptions of illness and
decisions about care. For example, De Raedt, Koster, and Ryckewaert (2013) found that older people were less
threatened by death than middle-aged people, and Haidet and colleagues (1998) found that young people were more
likely than older people to choose life-sustaining treatments to prolong their lives. Sanders, Donovan, and Dieppe
(2002), and Pound, Gompertz, and Ebrahim (1998) described how older people normalized illness in the context of
their age, and Gambling and Long (2012) described how young women struggled with treatment choices they
associated with conditions of old age.
Researchers have investigated the role of family in decision making about care (Quinn et al., 2012) and
generational differences in people’s attitudes and preferences for care (Mills & Wilmoth, 2002). Mills and Wilmoth
found that among three-generation families, the older generation was more concerned about family burden than
generations below them, and the middle generation was more focused on treatments than the older generation.
Yellen and Cella (1995) found that having dependent children predicted individuals’ decision to engage with
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aggressive cancer treatments, and Nilsson et al. (2009) found that patients with advanced cancer who had dependent
children were more distressed and more likely to choose aggressive treatments than patients with no dependent
children. Qualitative researchers have explored how people with life-limiting conditions experienced illness in the
context of parenthood (Bell & Ristovski-Slijepcevic, 2011), but we found no qualitative studies on how and why
parents with terminal illness make decisions about health care services in the context of parenthood.
We knew that people with ALS varied in their preferences for involving family in decisions about end-oflife care (Sulmasy et al., 2007) and expressed mixed feelings about assisted ventilation because it placed burden on
their families (Hirano et al., 2006). We also knew that people with ALS who chose long-term ventilation had a
desire to see their children and grandchildren grow up (Hirano & Yamazaki, 2010). The purpose of this article is to
illuminate how key components of the life course shape how people with ALS respond to impending mortality and
make decisions about their care.
Design and Methods
We used the grounded theory method (Corbin & Strauss, 2008) for this study because our aim was to identify
psychosocial processes (the interrelation of social factors and individual thought and behavior) not yet mapped by
researchers in the ALS field. We also sought to develop substantive theory which would apply to people with ALS
beyond our sample. We drew from Corbin and Strauss’ “conditional/consequential matrix,” which is an analytical
strategy used by qualitative researchers to consider a wide range of possible conditions (micro and macro) and
consequences that can enter into the context under study.
Sample
We used theoretical sampling procedures to sample 34 people from the Irish ALS population-based register in the
period 2011–2012. Theoretical sampling is a method whereby data sources are sampled on the basis of concepts
derived from data (Corbin & Strauss, 2008). We did not know in advance how many participants or what type of
participants with ALS we would sample because theoretical sampling is driven by emerging concepts within the
data. For example, when we identified from our analysis that aging was emerging as a category from the data, we
sampled participants along dimensions of aging (e.g., at different life stages).
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There are approximately 265 people living with ALS in the Republic of Ireland at any one time (Health
Information and Quality Authority, 2013) and the Irish register accounts for nearly all people with ALS in the
Republic of Ireland. Our ability to sample from the register enabled us to sample as guided by our data; i.e.,
theoretically. We sampled a diverse group of participants without preselection of geographical area, so we captured
experiences of participants who lived in different regions across the Republic of Ireland.
Seventeen men and 17 women participated in the study, and all had accessed medical and supportive care
services since their diagnosis of ALS. Their ages ranged from 37 to 81 years. Disease duration (from onset of
symptoms) among participants ranged from 4 months to 13 years, and when we stopped sampling, nearly one third
were deceased. Six participants were severely dysarthric and 2 were anarthric. Participants’ level of disability
varied, but most required physical assistance for everyday activities. Eight participants had already engaged with
life-sustaining interventions of noninvasive ventilation or gastrostomy feeding, or both, but none had engaged with
invasive (i.e., long-term) ventilation.
We did not exclude people with cognitive impairment, although conducting qualitative interviews with
those who had severe frontotemporal dementia was not possible within the design of our research. As we sampled,
we recruited participants whom we knew in advance had mild frontotemporal dementia (n = 1) and a somewhat
more advanced frontotemporal dementia (n = 1). We also interviewed participants whom we judged, through the
course of interviewing, to have mild to moderate cognitive impairment (n = 2). A small minority of participants
(which included those who we knew or suspected to have cognitive impairment) were mildly disinhibited during
their interview, which suggested mild behavioral change.
The majority of participants (n = 23) were married and lived with their spouse, who for most of them was
also their primary carer. Twenty-six participants were parents. All but one of the participants who were married had
children (minor and/or adult). Four participants were widowed and each of these participants had adult children.
Participants who had not married had no dependents, and participants who had not married and/or who were not in a
relationship either lived alone, in a care facility, or with a sibling. All participants less than 50 years old with
children lived with their children. Nearly one third of the sample had already retired from self- or paid employment
prior to the onset of ALS. The majority of participants (n = 19) were in self- or paid employment at the time of onset
of the condition, but only 3 were still working at the time of interview.
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Ethical Aspects
We gained approval from a heath service ethics review committee and from our local university ethics committee to
undertake this study. The Irish ALS population-based register is compiled by an Irish ALS research group. The first
author signed a confidentiality agreement with the research group to sample from the register. We phoned people on
the register whom we wished to interview and explained the study in full. Three people (2 of whom were anarthric)
were contacted by email because they ordinarily communicated by email. We mailed a participant information
leaflet to each individual who expressed interest in participating. We left the participation information leaflet with
each individual for 5 to 7 days, and then followed up by phone (or by email).
We gained full informed consent from each participant. From our experience in the field, we expected that
participants’ significant others might be gatekeepers at first, and subsequent points of contact. We found that
significant others of some participants acted as gatekeepers, in particular for participants who had high levels of
disability and/or who had already developed severe dysarthria. Participants with dysarthria were less likely to
communicate by phone and their carers or significant others communicated with the first author on their behalf. We
recognized that palliative care research has raised sensitivities for research participants not experienced by research
participants in other fields (Casarett, 2005). We adhered strictly to all ethical procedures.
Data Collection and Analysis
We collected and analyzed data in tandem to generate concepts to guide subsequent sampling (Corbin & Strauss,
2008). The first author conducted in-depth interviews with participants in their homes (1 resided in a hospice facility
and 1 in an extended care facility). At the request of the participant and/or their significant other, the significant
other was present for the entire interview with 7 participants and for a portion of the interview with 2 other
participants. The presence of a significant other inevitably shaped how participants shared their experiences, but all
participants engaged openly with the first author.
We did not use a prepared interview guide; rather, our aim was to capture participants’ perspectives as
openly as possible, and the first author invited them to talk about their experiences of health care services “since
MND [ALS] came into [their lives].” We sampled for variation in context and experiences, and we integrated
questions to explore experiences that might add new meaning to concepts that were emerging from the data.
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Interviews comprised open-ended, probing, prompting, and verifying questions. We digitally audio-recorded all
interviews. Interviews lasted between 40 and 130 minutes; the average duration was 80 minutes.
Variation in participants’ physical abilities shaped how the first author conducted the interviews. Our
emphasis was on the meaning of what participants communicated and not on the amount of data that we captured.
Anarthric participants used high-tech switch-activated and touch-screen alternative and assistive communication
(AAC) devices with synthetic speech output to communicate their responses, and the majority of severely dysarthric
participants used low-tech AAC devices (e.g., writing pads) to complement their verbal responses. All participants
were aware that they could stop the interview at any time or take as many breaks as they wished during the course of
the interview.
All interviews were professionally transcribed. Before we analyzed the data we invited participants (via
post or email) to check their transcript; none requested that the transcript be modified. Variation exists in grounded
theory in terms of when and how researchers use member checking as a tool to verify participants’ responses. Some
choose to return to participants and verify developing theory (Charmaz, 2006). We did not incorporate a return visit
to participants largely on the grounds of rapid progression of their disease and to avoid intrusion into their lives.
We met on a frequent basis to discuss data collection and findings. The second author guided study
procedures and interrogated the first author’s analysis. The third author oversaw study procedures and facilitated
sampling procedures. We began coding after the first two interviews. We broke data down into discrete parts (codes)
and abstracted these codes to form concepts. We coded for similarities and differences in the data by comparing
codes and concepts with new data, which formed more codes and concepts. We coded for process, which means
how participants described themselves as doing, feeling, thinking, and being in similar and different contexts. We
coded data comparatively between different conditions that were both explicit and implicit in the data. Our approach
enabled us to delineate and eventually exhaust concepts and categories (larger concepts) for their properties and
dimensions (Corbin & Strauss, 2008).
As we interviewed and analyzed our data, we explored tentative relationships between concepts and
categories to build substantive theory and to identify psychosocial processes in the data. The first author compiled
in-depth theoretical and reflexive memos about the data to guide sampling and theory building. For example, in a
memo entitled “making decisions in the context of family,” the first author captured variation in how participants
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made decisions with family and recorded how family and other emerging categories (e.g., parenthood) were
impacting on participants’ roles in their family and on their decision making in care.
We used the computer software package NVivo (QSR International, 2010) as a tool to store all memos,
record how we coded, and link memos to codes. We refined relationships between categories after we ceased
interviewing because at that stage no new data were adding new meaning to our categories; i.e., we had reached the
saturation point. Here, we expanded on insights from existing theoretical memos to compile additional theoretical
memos to refine relationships between categories. In turn, we unearthed key psychosocial processes in the data.
Findings
We derived multiple categories from our analysis and identified multiple relationships between categories. Our
findings describe how the primary categories of aging, acceptance, family, and parenthood shaped how participants
responded to ALS and made decisions about their care. Our findings also describe the relationships between these
categories that explain how participants confronted ALS and engaged with health care services. Excerpts from
individuals are used as exemplars of concepts or categories we confirmed across the dataset.
Aging, Life Stage, and Acceptance in ALS
We found that participants in later life (aged 70 years or older) were more accepting of ALS and of impending
mortality than participants in earlier adulthood. Although all participants struggled to some degree, between fighting
and accepting ALS and the losses they encountered because of it, they were more accepting of ALS when they had
reached later life, had fulfilled their ambitions, and had raised their children. One participant in later life commented,
I’ve a joke now about it. I’d love to wake up in the morning with my toes permanently up. That is dead! . . . I don’t
mind death at all but I feel sorry for people that would get it young, you know. God, I would hate to have it younger.
I’ve my kids raised and everything. . . . I’m lucky to reach [eighties] and happy with what I’ve done.
The relationship between age and acceptance was complex along a number of dimensions. Overall,
participants (regardless of age or life stage) indicated it was more acceptable for people in later life to die from ALS
than it was for “young” people to die from it. Indeed, participants thought it was “tragic” to witness young people
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struggle with such a life-limiting condition, and some middle-aged and older participants suggested that they would
give their own life for a “young” person with ALS to survive:
There’s a young boy, he got it at fifteen he said. He’s twenty-four now, struck down with it. I said to the wife, “I’d
prefer if I was taken now and that boy left.” He was young. I had a good old spin [good life so far] at [early sixties]. He
was only a young fella [man], young boy, so young.
Seven participants were under 50 years old. We classified these participants as “young” because they
considered themselves young in the context of having a condition they associated with middle and later life. Young
participants suggested that people in later life were more vulnerable in the “fight” against ALS and therefore more
likely than younger people to “resign” themselves to ALS. Young and middle-aged participants also implied that
ALS was somewhat more acceptable in later life because people in later life were more likely to have acquired other
morbidity. One young participant commented,
Being an old man who has probably other things [morbidity] going on, the whole thing is more acceptable. It’s like a
car: If the car is old and starts getting trouble it’s going to the scrap yard, because the car has done its bit.
Some participants in later life suggested they were accepting of ALS because they no longer felt worried
about the possibility of living to an age that they associated with loss of independence. Indeed, one participant
suspected that her quality of life would be unacceptably low if she were to reach “old age.” She lamented the loss of
living through her 70s and early 80s, but not the period she might otherwise have encountered beyond that point:
I come from a long-lived family, and I was liable to live into my mid-eighties and I didn’t want to get to ninety. But
early eighties is like ten years away and I was going to get a lot of retirement living into that time [but] . . . it would be
much harder to maintain your independence in your nineties.
Participants spoke of “becoming old” with ALS in the context of experiencing physical decline, which they
ordinarily associated with later life. They suggested that ALS had the capacity to “age” them. They also suggested
that “becoming old” with ALS made them more resigned to ALS. One middle-aged woman shared,
I see people over eighty and I’d say, “God, I’m never going to get old.” And then this thing [ALS] happened to me. . . .
I never felt old until this thing started. . . . It’s going to come to a stage that I probably just can’t go on any longer.
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We found that aging and acceptance were not only linked to participants’ perceptions of physical change
but also to their perceptions surrounding life stage. Personal milestones for participants centered on having raised
their children to be self-sufficient. Such milestones fostered feelings of acceptance. A participant in later life
disclosed,
I retired when I was [mid-fifties], and if I had been diagnosed at [mid-fifties] it would have been a totally
different ball game. It would have killed me, it would have destroyed me. . . . They [adult children] have
their families. I have no kind of responsibilities towards them. If I had young children, this would be the
most devastating thing that would have ever happened.
Participants who would “lose out on parenthood” were less accepting of ALS than participants who had
already raised their children. A young participant disclosed the following, with visible emotion:
It hits a very raw nerve, not for me but for my children. I don’t think it would be as devastating if my children were
reared. That is the hardest. . . . I’ve cried every day for months. . . . I’m young—as a parent, as a mother. You worry
about your children and that’s my worry.
Overall, participants suggested that it was more acceptable for people to die in “old age” and not acceptable to die as
a young parent. We discovered that participants shared these views regardless of their age-differentiated role, life
stage, or parenthood status.
Family: Context to Decision Making
We found that participants felt reassured by family but they also sought to reassure their family. Participants were
keen to know how ALS would progress for the “sake of the family,” and family (or the absence of family) was the
primary context for how and why participants opted for or declined services. Participants who had a spouse or
partner and/or adult children perceived themselves somewhat less reliant on service providers than those who did
not have a spouse or partner and/or adult children. A participant who was at the end stage of ALS disclosed,
She [ALS specialist nurse] asked me a couple of months ago did I feel I should get—what do you call it?—a home care
assistant, but I haven’t done that. . . . I don’t want one at the moment because my husband does what I can’t do.
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It was important for participants that family members endorsed the decisions they made about care. Some
participants paced services in line with how accepting their significant other was of change. One participant spoke
about how she delayed home care services until her spouse had come to terms with the need for such services:
I felt I needed to wait for him. He was very reluctant to have anybody into our home and he’s been doing all the
housework and the garden because we had always done it together, you see. . . . But he is getting there slowly, and so
now we have home help which started last week.
Participants’ attention to their loved ones’ well-being often restricted them in making the decisions they
wished to make about their care. One participant’s preference was to move to an extended care facility to alleviate
the burden of care on family; however, he believed such a move would have devastated his ailing spouse, who had
always relied on him:
I thought it may have been the right decision for me. If I were living on my own I would have said yes, it would have
made a lot of sense to me. . . . But I, I can’t do this. If I said that to [spouse], it’d kill her.
Participants who had no spouse, partner, or children suggested that they had more freedom in decision
making about care than those who had family. One participant explained why she opted against noninvasive
ventilation that had the potential to increase her life expectancy by a number of months: “You see, I don’t feel I have
the need to hang on at any cost. If I had a husband, wife, children, it might be different. So I'm free to make the
choice.” However, participants who had family were eager to make decisions with family. One participant disclosed,
My biggest fear, you know, [is] around being totally debilitated. . . . I constantly crave to be, to be told by the people
that matter most to me that you won't be left like this for years and years. . . . I suppose I'm talking euthanasia, stuff like
that.
Six participants spoke about assisted suicide. They indicated that they had a right to engage with assisted
suicide but also believed such action would devastate their family. One middle-aged participant who had considered
assisted suicide soon after her diagnosis explained why she chose not to follow through with it:
I had to consider my family and the implications. It’s like a suicide . . . the pebble in the water. It spreads out. It affects
so many people, and I suppose a lot of family, like with suicide, they get angry that you were selfish. . . . There are
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serious implications for them because they want you for just another day and of course you want them, so if push came
to shove, I don't think I could do it.
Participants’ decisions about care were shaped by how they struggled to find a balance between drawing
support from and providing support to loved ones. Some admitted that life-sustaining interventions provoked anxiety
for them, but they also planned to engage with these interventions to “be there” for their family. One participant who
was severely dysarthric (slurring of speech), moderately dysphagic (difficulty swallowing), and in respiratory
distress explained her position as the first author probed:
Participant (P): I want to be here for as long as I can, yeah.
Interviewer (I): So then you might choose them [life-sustaining interventions] to help you stay alive?
P: Oh yeah, but without being too much of a burden on [spouse].
I: . . . What is the point where you think it becomes too much of a burden?
P: Well, I say this to [spouse] . . . [but] he tells me that he wants to hold on to me!
Participants who spoke about invasive ventilation had already decided against it. It is not routinely
available to people with ALS in Ireland, but we found that participants’ expectations surrounding invasive
ventilation were shaped more by family than by the lack of availability. Participants deemed that invasive ventilation
might extend the period of dependency on their families. One woman who cared for her mother (who died of a
related motor neuron disorder) explained why she would not opt for invasive ventilation:
I just saw my mother suffer. She was told at the time that she had creeping paralysis and there was nothing that could
be done . . . so I’d love to just go [die] quick. I would hate to have to depend on everyone having to do everything for
me. . . . All the pain and anguish and the anger and everything that I went through, and I’d hate to inflict that on them
[family]. It would be unfair to them really.
We found that participants resisted “being a burden” on their family but were also resigned to becoming
more dependent on them. One middle-aged woman shared,
My daughter is saying that she’ll give up work and she’ll move in as a carer. But then she’s trying to get pregnant, so,
and I keep saying to live your own life: “The time will come when I do need you, really need you.”
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Overall, participants struggled between seeking to alleviate family concerns and needing more assistance from their
family. As we describe in the following section, their emotions surrounding family were particularly complex in the
context of parenthood.
Parenthood: Impact on Decision Making
We found that being a parent was a principal context for how the majority of participants who had children made
decisions about their care. Participants with young and adolescent children were attuned to the “devastating” impact
ALS had on their children, and all of them opted for, declined, and paced services in line with how their children
responded to the presence of health care services in their lives. One woman disclosed,
PP: During this summer just gone by I didn’t want to be making calls to physio[therapy], occupational therapy, district
nurse. . . . I just felt that once the kids are back at school, sure, I can make a phone call again. I’ll wait until the holidays
are over.
II: Is that to do with the kids, do you think?
P: Definitely.
“Losing out on parenthood” had a profound effect on young and some middle-aged participants. Those who
had young and adolescent children were overwhelmed by the prospect that they would die before they had raised
their children. Nonetheless, parenthood had the potential to foster feelings of hope and energized some to resist
ALS. One participant, who was adamant to engage with available life-sustaining and supportive care to enable him
to parent, disclosed with visible emotion,
I have a wonderful relationship with my children; we’re very close. If they were adults, they would probably deal with
it better, so I'm kind of hanging on for that, if I can. It’s all for them, and that’s what brings the tears.
Middle-aged participants with dependents were troubled by the prospect of death because they also had
children who relied heavily on them. In some cases, their desire to live on was as strong as the desire felt by young
participants’ with children. One middle-aged participant who had engaged with noninvasive ventilation soon after
his diagnosis disclosed with humor,
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You see I don't want to die anyway, because there’s the daughter. She has four [children], she’s four, my son has, he
has two, but I mean [daughter] can’t stay away from home, you know! And we see them as children even sure, bloody
hell, they are thirty-, nearly forty-odd years of age now.
Participants’ experience of mounting disability nonetheless alerted them to the potential impact of lifesustaining treatments and support services on their children. Participants were keen to minimize disruption to their
children’s lives and had conflicting emotions about engaging with services that had the potential to sustain their
lives. One middle-aged participant explained why he wished to “expire in solitude,” without life-sustaining
interventions or supportive care:
I think you know if you try to do something that you can’t . . . I think it’s much more distressing for those around you. I
suspect it is anyway. . . . It puts an awful lot of unnecessary distress on them, really.
We found that participants did not want to become dependent on their children. For this reason, as
illustrated by the following quotation, young and middle-aged participants with children struggled between living on
with ALS and hoping for death prior to losing all their independence:
[I] just want to get them across the line. . . . I’ve three of them. My eldest is [late teens], my youngest is, he’s nearly
[age] there’s a bit of rearing on him left to be done. . . . [But] I also know I don't want them being so young seeing me
quite ill . . . so it would be peace of mind for me to think that when this thing goes so far that it’ll be stopped.
Overall, participants’ sense of duty toward their children shaped how they made decisions about care.
Discussion
We have unearthed key psychosocial processes that underpin how people with ALS engage with health care
services. There have been many qualitative explorations of people’s health care experiences in chronic and
malignant disease; however, we knew little about how terminally ill people with nonmalignant disease constructed
their experiences, and how these experiences shaped their engagement with health care services. We found that
people’s experiences and choices in ALS were shaped by the sociocultural context of their lives.
In the life-course perspective, time and temporality are key to how life unfolds (Hendricks, 2012). Our
findings demonstrate how age- and life-stage-related roles shaped how people with ALS approached mortality and
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engaged with health care services. Alwin (2012) has suggested that our lives are benchmarked by the milestones of
age, but that our experience of aging is also shaped by the social context of our lives. In our research, participants’
engagement with health care services was shaped by how they constructed their family roles and trajectories at
different stages of life.
There are many definitions of age (e.g., chronological, biological, and psychological), but most attributes of
age are culturally determined (Timonen, 2008). We found that people with ALS, regardless of age or life stage,
construed physical change (e.g., muscle weakness, loss of mobility) as analogous to aging in later life. Our findings
pertaining to age and acceptance in ALS resonate with those of researchers who have described how people
normalized illness in the context of later life-stage transitions and trajectories (Pound et al., 1998; Sanders et al.,
2002). Our findings also resonate somewhat with the functionalist disengagement theory of aging. Cumming and
Henry (1961) argued that people respond to age-related loss of function and morbidity by adopting behaviors and
attitudes that are oriented toward disengaging from active roles in life. We found that the participants, regardless of
age or life stage, adhered to this construction of later life as a period of resignation and acceptance.
In biographical accounts among people with terminal illness (Reeve, Lloyd-Williams, Payne, & Dowrick,
2010), researchers have tended to focus on individual and personal biography without explicit reference to social
and contextual factors. In our study, we paid close attention to how people constructed their experience in the
context of social structures, and in doing so we found that family shaped decision making among people with ALS.
Elder (2003) has argued that people construct experiences interdependently and that their sociohistorical roots (e.g.,
family) shape their transitions and trajectories. Our findings demonstrate that family is the primary context for how
and why people with ALS in Ireland make decisions about their care.
Researchers have investigated the impact of ALS on family (Aoun, Connors, Priddis, Breen, & Colyer,
2012), but few had explored how people with ALS (from their perspective) interact with their family as they engage
with services. We found that participants were more reassured about their future care when they engaged family
members in their care and when family members involved themselves in their care. Participants also suggested that
they had become more reliant on family members for their care.
Our findings differ from findings of other studies on the role of family in decision making in terminal
illness. Sulmasy et al. (2007) found that terminally ill people (including people with ALS) opted for shared decision
making with family, but some also preferred to make decisions independent of family. The majority of participants
15
in our study lived with their significant other and were reliant on family to provide care. Home care services in the
Republic of Ireland have been underdeveloped (Timonen, Doyle, & O’Dwyer, 2012), and the level of formal service
provision in the country has been relatively low compared to other developed welfare states (Tussing & Wren,
2006). It is possible that this context (living with and becoming reliant on family) shaped participants’ preference to
involve family in decisions about care.
Our findings demonstrate that family caregiving in ALS is reciprocal: people with ALS receive care from
family but also seek to reassure their family and make decisions about care in the interest of their family. Macmillan
and Copher (2005) argued that the life course is not simply defined by transitions and trajectories, but also by how
multiple role trajectories within families interlock to configure roles and pathways within families. We found
diversity in generational relationships in our study. Participants of different ages and life stages were dependent (or
were becoming dependent) on their family but also struggled to maintain their caregiving role to their spouse and to
generations below them.
Drawing on the life-course perspective, researchers have argued that parenthood is a pivotal life-course
transition, and that people’s experience of parenting has a significant impact on their lives and shapes their
trajectories (Umberson, Pudrovska, & Reczek, 2010). Researchers have found that parenting young children
exposed parents to life stressors (Evenson & Simon, 2005), but relationships with children were salient to parents
(Mandemakers & Dykstra, 2008). We found that parenting in ALS was important for all parents, but young and in
some cases middle-aged participants were far more distressed than participants in later life about their children’s
imminent loss of a parent.
The participants’ contradictory emotions surrounding the desire to live on with ALS and the desire to die
soon from ALS were, for the most part, related to their perceived responsibilities as parents (or to their freedom
from such responsibilities). We identified that having children who were seen to be self-sufficient, or indeed having
no children at all, relieved participants’ anxieties about the future and fostered acceptance. Most of our findings
pertaining to parenthood had not previously been identified by researchers in the ALS field.
Conclusion
Based on in-depth interviews resulting from theoretical sampling from a national register, we identified key
psychosocial processes that explain how and why people with ALS engage with health care services. We have
16
derived important insights that might be applicable to people with ALS in other countries and to people with other
terminal conditions. We designed our study so that it could be replicated in other countries or systemic contexts,
enabling further theoretical development and comparisons between contexts.
Our findings have implications for research and clinical practice in the field. Leading experts in ALS
(Andersen et al., 2012) have referred to timing of interventions based on disease progression. Clinicians have
advocated regular multidisciplinary health care intervention for people with ALS and when clinically appropriate,
encouraged early initiation of life-sustaining interventions to improve survival. In our study, we found that people
with ALS engaged with health care services in line with their own life transitions and trajectories and constructed
their experience of health care services at both family and societal levels. Disease progression on its own did not
determine how and why people with ALS engaged with health care services.
We argue that service providers need to pay close attention to life-course trajectories and family relations of
people with ALS by asking them about their roles within the family. The family roles that people with ALS adopt
shape their response to ALS and their decisions about care. Traditionally, clinicians and researchers in the ALS field
have conceptualized family and family care burden without sufficient attention to the roles people with ALS adopted
within their families. People with ALS maintain roles within the family (e.g., as parent, spouse, or partner) even
though they become physically dependent on family. We believe our findings are relevant for future research that is
attuned to the impact of family relations on decision making in care.
Acknowledgments
We thank all participants for sharing their experiences with us.
Funding
This project was funded by the Health Research Board (HRB) of Ireland.
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