What Is Chronic Illness For Psychologists? A Clinical Psychology Podcast Episode.

As aspiring and qualified psychologists, our work mainly focuses on helping people with mental health difficulties. For example, how their depression, social anxiety or trauma responses negatively impact their lives and cause them significant levels of psychological distress. Then we use our psychological knowledge to create interventions to help them. However, less often, we’re taught to think about how physical health and chronic illness can impact our clients in their daily functioning, their quality of life and their mental health. That’s right. Your physical health and chronic illness can directly impact your mental health. Therefore, in this clinical psychology mixed with health psychology podcast episode, you’ll learn more about chronic illness. By the end, you’ll understand what is chronic illness, how chronic illness impacts people and how does chronic illness impact mental health. If you enjoy learning about health psychology, life as a clinical psychologist and more then this is a great episode for you.

Today’s psychology podcast episode has been sponsored by Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Note: I do apologise in advance if anything in this podcast episode is worded clumsy. I am privileged that I do not have a chronic illness so I do not have lived experience of these conditions. Everything in this episode is based on what I have read and witnessed and heard from friends and my partner.

What Is Chronic Illness?

Chronic illness is when a person has a condition that lasts for at least a year and it requires ongoing medical care or the condition consistently limits what a person can do on a daily basis. For example, chronic illnesses can include asthma, lung disease, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, chronic fatigue syndrome amongst others. I’ve known friends with chronic fatigue to be so exhausted and tired that all they can do is lie in bed all day, so this is an example of how a chronic condition can limit your daily activities.

In addition, tens of millions of adults in the United States live with a chronic illness and a lot of them actually have at least two chronic illnesses. And having a chronic illness typically requires you to undergo a lot of lifestyle changes that can be challenging and stressful. For example, with a chronic illness, you have to manage new diets, new exercise regimens, a demanding checkup schedule, medication and limits on your social life, your work and your travel.

All of these challenges and stressors can lead to anxiety, anger and sometimes depression.

And that’s why I wanted to talk about chronic illness this week.

From time to time in my clinical psychology lectures, I’ve heard about clinical psychologists working in medical settings to help people with chronic conditions, like chronic pain. I’ve always thought that this was fascinating and interesting but because I’m really busy, I’ve never thought about it that much. Mainly, this is due to my privilege that I do not have a chronic health condition so I don’t need to look into this area of psychology.

Until last week.

Last week, I was hanging out with my partner at the Dungeons and Dragons game that our friend runs and there are normally a lot of us there. Afterwards, a few of us go out for dinner, me and my partner spend the entire time talking and we basically blank everyone else and then we hang out afterwards. Normally, by talking outside their accommodation for 30-minutes at least. Yet last week, dinner had finished early and we didn’t play board games like we normally do with our friendship group, so me and my partner were going to hang out at mine. Until my partner’s chronic pain and other chronic health conditions kicked in and they expereinced loss of interest and pleasure and their mental health just dropped.

We still spoke for 30-minutes outside their accommodation until their joint pain made it unbearable.

Just seeing and hearing about how their chronic illness impacted their mental health made me sad, it affected me and it made me really curious about this area of psychology. Therefore, before I can ever hope to understand how clinical psychology can be used to help those with chronic conditions, I actually need to understand what chronic illness is first of all.

That’s what the rest of this episode focuses on.

Clinical Psychologists Help People Cope with Chronic Illness

Whilst there are a lot of different ways how clinical psychologists work with those with chronic illness, one way is coping with their new diagnosis. Since once people receive a diagnosis of their chronic illness, they often experience a lot of grief. They grieve for a life lost and a future that will never go as they had planned. For example, if you’re diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome then your dreams of being a runner, a sports player or if your dream career involved something with a lot of physical activity like being a firefighter. That all seems impossible now, and maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.

Whatever the case, a diagnosis of chronic illness involves a lot of grieving.

In addition, people with chronic illness have to go through a lot of mood changes, even in the day to day, because there will be times when they’re fine and happy. Then their chronic illness might impact them, might stop them doing something and this might make them anxious, angry or depressed. This is because our mood can be very dependent on our options and your physical health. One of the reasons why my partner’s mood fluctuates slightly at the moment is because they don’t have any treatment options, they don’t know exactly what they have and their physical health is still really bad. This lack of physical health and treatment option has a negative impact on their mood.

Clinical psychologists are useful here because research shows that when clients directly tackle their diagnosis instead of avoiding it, and they seek help instead of retreating from the diagnosis. They experience better life satisfaction and undergo a healthier adjustment.

This is why it’s important to encourage clients with chronic illness to become more empowered by asking their doctors questions about their diagnosis, treatment and what this means for them. Psychologists can help clients by supporting them whilst they process their grief and undergo this adjustment period.

Similar to what psychologists do in mental health interventions, they can help clients with chronic illness by reminding them to focus on what brings them joy and other aspects of behavioural activation. This can be as simple as committing to one small act of joy each day. Since clients can reduce their outside commitments and obligations to focus on things that are more important to them personally, like spending time with their children or partner. This can help protect them against the stress of their diagnosis.

Ultimately, when it comes to coping with chronic illness (and this is definitely where clinical psychologists can be extremely useful) it’s critical that clients remain positive despite their chronic illness. Since research shows people with a cancer diagnosis who remained resilient and positive where able to use professional counselling and social support to manage their chronic illness for years and decades. This meant the clients were able to avoid rumination, accept their mortality and take an active role in their physical health and treatment. All despite their cancer diagnosis.

This positivity is the key to everything when dealing with a chronic illness, and some clients believe that their diagnosis changed them for the better.

At the time of writing, I’m currently reading I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest With You By Miranda Hart and it’s a book about her diagnosis and healing from Lyme disease. It’s a chronic health condition so she hasn’t been cured but her outlook, her behavioural patterns and her cognitive processes are at the core of the book. She writes about how her stress-pot, her constant people-pleasing and wanting to be extremely productive because that’s she got her self-worth all contributed to her physical health getting worse to the point where it almost killed her.

She learnt so much about herself all because of her Lyme disease.

I highly recommend that you read the book if you want to have a deeper understanding of how mental health and what we think and feel and how we behave impacts our physical health.

Another aspect of this is people with chronic illness need to try and commit to staying positive even if they find their mood decreasing because of their chronic illness. Since someone can become sick of being sick. This is where psychologists can be useful because psychologists could help support a client whilst they support the client in acknowledging how they feel and allow themselves to be upset, reach out to supportive others and challenge themselves to find positive aspects of their lives to help them regain a sense of control.

Even though, I don’t have a chronic illness, this is why I found my rape and anorexia counselling so valuable. They both helped me to understand to process my feelings, know that they were valid and find the positive aspects in my life so I could feel in control again.

A final aspect of coping with chronic illness that I want to mention is how people with chronic illness manage fatigue. Since fatigue is a symptom of many chronic conditions and this represents a massive challenge for people who face it. When this happens, a person with chronic illness (and perhaps a psychologist could support them realising this) should try to move on from their ideals of an ideal day towards a more realistic one. They can listen to their body’s cues, as well as become more flexible in their relationship with their body so they don’t beat themselves up over their fatigue and how it impacts their daily life. Then when they don’t have fatigue or when their fatigue impacts their life slightly less, then they can be able to embrace the moments that they can.

For example, if you wanted to get a ton of work done today and you wanted to go out in the evening to see your friends before hanging out with your partner at night. Yet your fatigue makes that ideal day impossible. It would be about focusing on what you can do, being kind and self-compassionate and managing your health one day at a time, so when you feel better and less fatigued, you can embrace the joyful moments that you want to.

How Does Chronic Illness Impact Mental Health?

I wanted there to be a section in this psychology podcast episode that explicitly explained how chronic illness impacts mental health. Therefore, chronic illness has a profound emotional and psychological impact on people because they can lead to a range of intense emotions, like grief, sadness, anxiety and frustration. Mainly, this comes from the life-alternating nature of a diagnosis and the diagnosis can make people feel hopeless about their lives as they no longer have a sense of control. Another side effect is that these feelings of hopelessness can exacerbate feelings of depression within people with chronic illness. Psychologists can help because they can support clients through the grieving process and help them readjust to their new diagnosis.

Another way how chronic illness impacts mental health is through an increased risk of depression. Since research shows people with chronic illness are at a higher risk of developing depression with people with diabetes being 2 to 3 times more likely to experience depression compared to people without diabetes. As you can imagine psychologists can help clients deal with their feelings of depression. This is even more important when we learn that depression can complicate the management of chronic illnesses and typically leads to worse health outcomes and even an increased mortality rate.

The references for all these facts are available at the bottom of the blog post.

A final way how chronic illness can impact mental health is through coping strategies and treatment which touches on a lot of the points I mentioned in the section above. This is why psychologists are needed so they can ensure a holistic treatment plan is developed and stuck to that addresses the client’s physical and psychological needs.

Psychologists Can Help People Facing a Future of Illness

Unless you’ve ever met or you have a chronic illness, like me, then you might never have thought about what the diagnosis of a chronic illness can mean to someone. Of course, there are benefits like it means they can hopefully get access to treatment options that will help them with their symptoms. However, a diagnosis also means a confirmation of everything they’ve feared. It means they actually have a chronic illness that is with them for the rest of their lives so they’re going to face an uncertain future where their illness is always with them.

And they need to learn how to live and deal with that.

As a result, finding support is critical after a diagnosis of chronic illness and thankfully, there are support for groups for many health conditions across the country or there are online support groups too. Yet whilst these support groups are critical because you get to meet and talk with other people with the same condition as you, it is support from friends and family members that will be important to help the person cope with their chronic illness.

Sharing News Of A Chronic Illness Diagnosis

One difficulty with a new chronic illness diagnosis is that it can be very scary to share the news with friends and family members. This is a deeply personal piece of information to share and they’re likely to be nervous, anxious and concerned about how other people will react because it will fundamentally change how others see them. For example, whilst I don’t have a chronic illness, there are some parrels with telling others that you’re a rape survivor. To put this in the dating context, I wasn’t sleeping, I felt sick and I was scared that my partner was going to leave me if I told them that I was raped. Thankfully, they didn’t but it was a massive stressor that I didn’t need on top of everything else in my life at the time.

Equally, people with chronic illness don’t want their friends and family members to judge them for their chronic illness.

Personally, whilst I know being raped and having chronic illness is not the same thing, but there will be times when your health means you cannot do things, you cannot go outside and you have to cancel plans with friends. It is even more hurtful when your friends and family members (thankfully this is only the minority) do judge you and make comments. I think this is similar to people with invisible chronic conditions because there will always be some silly people who do believe “you look fine, so you must be fine”.

Do not listen to those people.

In reality, what I have found and what a lot of people with chronic illness have found too is that your friends and family members will be a lot more supportive than you ever thought possible. They will be able and willing to offer you help, but it’s important that you establish clear boundaries with them too so your friends and family members know what aspects of your chronic illness you are not comfortable talking about.

In addition, some people with chronic health conditions might feel fine most of the time but then they might have episodes of illness or fatigue. This means they might need to put breaks on plans or cancel things because they need to look after themselves.

This is why it’s important to be open and honest with friends and loved ones according to experts. It’s better to be open about your needs for hands-on and emotional support so you know you don’t need to deal with your illness alone. It’s okay to ask for help with shopping, cooking, rides to appointments, childcare and so.

Psychologists are very useful at this point in the chronic illness process. Clinical psychologists can work with carers, clients and their partners to come to terms with the chronic illness diagnosis. Psychologists can help the client come to terms with the diagnosis, come up with a plan about how to tell others and how to manage their life alongside their illness.

What’s The Main Challenge of Living With A Chronic Illness For Decades?

This is even more important when we learn that the primary challenge of living with a chronic illness for decades to come is the uncertainty that it causes. The person with the chronic illness might never know when their symptoms will flare up, what treatments will work and what job or career they are actually going to be able to do. This all takes an emotional toll on the person and leads to “illness uncertainty”.

Illness Uncertainty is the inability for a person to determine the meaning of illness-related events and this makes a person experience unpredictability, ambiguity, deficient information and complexity. From what I have seen from one of my friend’s partners, she can be enjoying herself, talking and have a perfectly normal day then her chronic health flares up and she cannot function, she has to lay down for hours and rest. Sometimes she can work out what caused it but there are times when she can’t. It is very life-limiting when this happens and she sometimes made comments where she would avoid going out because she couldn’t guarantee she wouldn’t have a flare up.

How Chronic Illness Can Lead To Changes In Friendships?

Another challenge of chronic illness is they can often find that their relationships with their close others change, and sometimes their friends “go missing” so their friends effectively ditch them. And it’s common for people with chronic illnesses to get angry, feeling let down by someone and they blame themselves for friendships ending or changing because of their chronic illness. Yet when this happens, experts suggest it’s more adaptive and healthier to recognise that relationships always change and this rarely has anything to do with health.

Changes in relationships are just a normal part of life.

And this is why it’s important to engage in self-compassion when relationships change so clients aren’t generating stories about why a friend has stopped contacting or talking to them that might not reflect the reality of what happened.

Psychologists can be very useful here in helping the client to navigate these social changes and learn how to express self-compassion.

How Does Chronic Illness Impact Young People?

Penultimately, chronic illnesses can pose massive challenges to young people, like my partner and my best friend. Lots of people might believe that because a young person acts and looks “normal” (whatever that means) that it is impossible for them to have a chronic illness. Yet the young people with the chronic illness is likely to fixate and stress about their education (and this is one of the reasons why my best friend has struggled with university for years), how they’re going to find a romantic partner and how they’re going to live a life where they have to watch everyone else do fun, cool things but because of their chronic illness they cannot take part.

This is an aspect I remember very well from last August at the time of writing. Everyone else was out, going on holidays and doing cool things with partners and loved ones. My best friend was up in the Midlands with their family, my parents were doing knife-making and so on. Meanwhile, I was stuck at home alone, experiencing trauma reactions, unable to move and I was experiencing a lot of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder symptoms. It felt me feel even worse that I was trapped at home because of my health and everyone else was living an amazing life in my eyes.

People with chronic illness experience similar feelings.

This is where psychologists can be helpful because they can support a person with chronic

illness

Can People with Chronic Illness Achieve Post-Traumatic Growth?

Finally, post-traumatic growth is one of my favourite psychological concepts because I experienced a lot of this after my rape. Yet people with chronic illness might experience growth in five key areas proposed by Richard Tedeschi and Lawrence Calhoun. These key areas are seeing new possibilities, relating to others, finding personal strength, achieving appreciation of life and experiencing spiritual change. Whilst experiencing growth in these areas are not universal, especially when comes to chronic illness, sometimes these growth areas can be developed through therapy.

Clinical Psychology Conclusion

After seeing how my partner’s chronic illness impacted their mental health last week, I really wanted to learn more about chronic illness. I know I have long, long way to go before I have ever claim to remotely understand what it is like to have a chronic illness, let alone how it impacts their mental health. I am really glad that I’ve done this episode because we’re all learnt what chronic illness is, what some of the challenges are of living with chronic illness and how psychologists can help those with chronic illness.

I truly believe that psychology has a valuable place within physical health because your physical body and health might generate the symptoms. But it is your psychological processes and your perception of your physical health that will impact your mental health and the psychological side of inflammation and psychological experiences of illness.

Psychology really is more powerful and helpful than any of us could ever know.

I really hope you enjoyed today’s psychology student life psychology podcast episode.

If you want to learn more, please check out:

FREE 8 PSYCHOLOGY BOOK BOXSET

Working With Children and Young People: A Guide To Clinical Psychology, Mental Health and Psychotherapy. Available from all major eBook retailers and you can order the paperback and hardback copies from Amazon, your local bookstore and local library, if you request it. Also available as an AI-narrated audiobook from selected audiobook platforms and library systems. For example, Kobo, Spotify, Barnes and Noble, Google Play, Overdrive, Baker and Taylor and Bibliotheca.

Patreon for exclusive access and rewards

Have a great day.

Clinical Psychology and Health Psychology References and Further Reading

Beckmann, J., Huber, M., & Andonian-Dierks, C. S. (2024). Chronic illness and well-being: Promoting quality of life with a broadened concept of recovery. In Fostering Recovery and Well-being in a Healthy Lifestyle (pp. 3-23). Routledge.

Hanvey, I., Malovic, A., & Ntontis, E. (2022). Glass children: The lived experiences of siblings of people with a disability or chronic illness. Journal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 32(5), 936-948.

https://patient.info/news-and-features/how-a-chronic-illness-affects-your-mental-health

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2021/the-intersection-of-mental-health-and-chronic-disease

https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/chronic-illness-mental-health

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/basics/chronic-illness

Koenig, H. G. (2023). Suicidal behaviors in diabetics, mental health of cancer patients following curative treatment, substance use disorder in hospitalized psychiatric patients in Botswana, nutritional factors as predictors and mediators of mental health problems in chronic illness, and more. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 58(4), 299-301.

Skojec, T. A., Davidson, T. M., & Kelechi, T. J. (2025). The relationship between uncertainty in illness and psychological adjustment to chronic illness. Journal of Health Psychology, 30(4), 622-637.

I truly hope that you’ve enjoyed this blog post and if you feel like supporting the blog on an ongoing basis and get lots of rewards, then please head to my Patreon page.

However, if want to show one-time support and appreciation, the place to do that is PayPal. If you do that, please include your email address in the notes section, so I can say thank you.

Which I am going to say right now. Thank you!

Click  https://www.buymeacoffee.com/connorwhiteley for a one-time bit of support.