Leisure Activities for Patients with Diffuse Connective Tissue Diseases

Leisure is everyone right, regardless of the clinical condition of each individual. The quality of life (QoL) of patients with dermatoses has been related to the practice of leisure activities (PLA); however, little is known about this practice in these patients. This study aimed to verify the PLA in patients with Diffuse Connective Tissue Diseases (DCTD). This is a descriptive, qualitative, and quantitative field study with patients seen at the Dermatology Outpatient Clinic (Hospital de Clínicas) of the University of Campinas (UNICAMP), São Paulo, Brazil. A form was used, containing closed questions about the sociodemographic and clinical profiles, and an open question about leisure. The responses were categorized according to the classification of leisure cultural content. Descriptive statistics, construction of a crosstable and the Mann-Whitney and Kruskal-Wallis tests were used. Data from 62 patients were collected, who aged between 19.4 and 75.3 years (average of 49.32±12.55 years). Among the patients, 80.6% were female and 70.9% were diagnosed with Cutaneous or Systemic Lupus Erythematosus (LE). The most practiced leisure activities were those related to manual and virtual content, mentioned by 24.6% of the patients. Another 18.0% reported preferring to stay at home or sleep (other activities), and no patient reported physical-sports or tourist leisure practices. The PLAs were little varied, showing 75.8% of the patients taking only one type of content related to these practices and 12.9% not carrying out any leisure activities. The elderly were the ones who most reported manual and virtual activities. An association was found between the variety of leisure content practiced and literacy level. Illiterate patients were those who least reported activities related to leisure, when compared to those who completed elementary school (X² = 24.686; p= 0.035). Before diagnosis, 56.5% of the patients performed physical activities, of which 27.4% could be classified as physical-sports leisure. After the disease development, only 19.7% of them maintained physical activities, and, of all the activities practiced by them, only 9.7% could be considered as leisure activities, but none as physical-sports leisure. Thus, it appears that leisure practices among patients with DCTD are scarce and little varied, which interferes with their QoL. The orientation and practice of these activities are necessary so that they can make choices and vary the types of activities practiced. Likewise, more studies, which can support actions that encourage and enable the leisure practices of these patients, play an important role.