What Affects the Client’s Therapeutic Compliance?

People undergo therapy to bring about desired changes in themselves because therapy is designed in such a manner that it is able to achieve certain desired outcomes in the concerned patients. Achievement of these outcomes depends on various factors and one of them is the client’s therapeutic compliance. The client’s therapeutic compliance includes the patient’s compliance with medication, diet, exercise or lifestyle changes. Nevertheless, there are various factors that affect the client’s therapeutic compliance. 

Factors Affecting the Client’s Therapeutic Compliance

There are factors that contribute to the client’s therapeutic non-compliance. Other similar terms that can be used in sync with therapeutic compliance can be adherence to therapy, concordance to therapy, and others.

  • Lack of consistency between an individual’s health-seeking or maintenance behaviour and recommendations given by healthcare professionals.
  • Compliance of patients to medicine rules in proximity to the time of clinic appointments.
  • Lack of consistency in a patient to continue the therapy till the issue gets resolved.
  • Lack of capacity to build trust in the therapist and discontinuing therapy too soon.
  • Demographic factors like age, gender education, marriage status, etc of the patient.
  • Set of acquired beliefs, values, motivation, and attitude in a client.
  • Physical comorbidities.
  • Substance abuse like tobacco smoking or alcohol consumption.
  • Method of administration.
  • Level of complexity in treatment.
  • The lasting period of treatment.
  • The side effects of medication (if any).
  • Amount of behavioural change required at the end of the therapy.
  • Absence of accessibility to the therapist.
  • Complications in filling the prescriptions.
  • Unsatisfied clinic visits or sessions.
  • Charges of sessions and income.
  • Nature of social support.
  • Lack of ability to take a break from work.
  • The severity of the problem.
  1. Age

Elderly people fail to become compliant with the therapy because they are usually equipped with problems like vision, hearing, and memory that create difficulties for them to follow instructions. 

On the other hand, middle-aged people give priority to other things in life than the prescription given by the therapist, due to commitment to work, they are not able to make the appointments.

Young children are dependent on their parents and guardians to attend sessions and disagreement or rebellious attitudes with them will affect their therapeutic compliance. 

  1. Set of Acquired Beliefs, Values, Motivation, and Attitude in a Client

While some patients think that their problem is untreatable, some have religious beliefs and some are worried about the declining effect of medication with time. The clients who lack the motivation to modify their behaviour and follow medications become non-compliant with time. Some clients, especially adolescents carry a negative attitude with themselves that they are not normal like their friends, leading to an absence of compliance in therapy.

  1. The Lasting Period of Treatment

Acute illness comes with the client’s therapeutic compliance and vice versa. This is because the patient’s attitude of denying the therapy reduces with short duration of treatment. 

  1. Absence of Accessibility to The Therapist

Patients who give more importance to their work and other things, often become non-compliant. The reason for the same can be the travelling distance between his residence and the clinic. If the therapist is easily accessible to the patient, then he can regularly attend sessions and give desired outcomes. 

  1. Nature of Social Support

Social and emotional support from friends, family or healthcare providers contributes to the willingness of an individual to take therapy till results are attained. This is because social support helps to remove negative thoughts from the client’s mind and become motivated and encouraged to complete the therapy. 

A Takeaway

The client’s therapeutic compliance is his behaviour towards taking medication, following diet alterations or implementing lifestyle changes. As mentioned above, there can be various types of client therapeutic non-compliance and factors contributing to the same. The main concern is that client’s therapeutic compliance and non-compliance play a major role in achieving the desired outcomes at the end of therapy. 

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