Background: Patients with type-2 diabetes have poor adherence to the therapeutic regime. It can result in various complications in body systems associated with undesirable metabolic control. Purpose: The present study aimed to explore the inhibitors of medication adherence in patients with type-2 diabetes. Patients and methods: This was a qualitative study using a conventional content analysis method. Participants were 12 patients with type-2 diabetes referred to the diabetes unit in Saghez, Kurdistan Province in 2015. The purposive sampling method was used with a maximum variation in sampling, and data collection was continued until data saturation was achieved. Semi-structured interviews were used for data collection. Interviews were recorded and immediately transcribed verbatim. Results: Data analysis led to the development of four main categories including disbelief in medical explanatory/prescriptive knowledge, lived experiences of the disease, challenges of everyday life, and interactive/economic challenges. The main inhibitors were the patient’s understanding of his/her own physical status and strategies used for maintaining the internal balance. Healthcare providers need to take patients’ perceptions into account when they are prescribing medicinal diets. Another inhibitor was the incidents of everyday life, including economic and social challenges, and interactions to receive education and skills for living with the disease. Conclusion: Beliefs of the medical team and patients should be brought closer to each other, and patients’ trust in the medical team should be increased. Nurses should consider the unique experience of every patient when giving healthcare recommendations, and try to limit the existing challenges as much as possible.

We conducted this research based on a qualitative approach to describe the opinions of older widows and widowers on remarriage obstacles. Based on purposive sampling and inclusion criteria, we chose 48 participants on maximum diversity of sex, age, education, employment, and socioeconomic status. Two thirds of the participants were female, 40% had spent more than 10 years widowed, and 65% were living with their children. We collected data individually through semistructured, face-to-face interviews. Based on conventional content analyses, 2 independent researchers implemented data analysis manually. Barriers to remarriage were finally categorized into 4 main themes: personal, normative, interactive, and financial factors. Results of this study showed that older people are more concerned about public opinions and social norms surrounding remarriage. As long as these thoughts and norms are not changed, the concept of remarriage among widows and widowers remains a vital taboo and concern.

Our aim in the present study was to explore the cultural and social factors for child marriage in Sanandaj, Iran. In this qualitative study, semi-structured individual interviews were employed to collect data from the women married under the age of 18, their parents, and key informants. Thematic analysis was used to generate new insights and concepts from the data, collected from 40 participants. The socio-cultural factors perpetuating child marriage, reported by participants, were; “neutralization of girls,” “child marriage-inducing customs and beliefs,” “determinant power of males,” “technology and facilitators of child marriage.” Families' efforts to marry their children, the acceptance of child marriage by law and norms, encouragement of social networks, neighborhoods, relatives, and peers all have a mutual and reinforcing interdependence, which facilitates child marriage in the community. So, the interaction of all these features should be taken into account while delving into child marriage phenomenon. Socio-cultural elements should be emphasized in all interventional efforts and micro- and macro-level health promotion policy-makings aiming at reducing the rate of child marriage.

Formal education in Iran, especially higher education, has been a means to smoothen the road to social mobility, provide good jobs, and boost people’s earnings. Now, being a university graduate and remaining unemployed is regarded as a challenge. In addition, governments consider this new unemployment a threat to their legitimacy. It seems that young unemployed graduates experience different problems in their social lives. This study aims to investigate the problems encountered by young unemployed graduates and to identify which aspects of situation provide a threatening condition for the society and government. This study has adopted a qualitative approach to answer these questions. It has been conducted in a Kurdish-Iranian context. The authors used a sample of 22 unemployed graduates and conducted semi-structured interviews with each of the sample members. The data gathered from the interviews were analyzed using the qualitative content analysis method. There emerged several themes that described the unemployed graduates’ lives. Findings show that the definition of job is gender based. Unemployment is interpreted as “illness,” “uselessness,” and “social injustice.” To cope with the unemployment issue, the unemployed graduates have to follow different strategies, including “seclusion,” “continuing education,” or “restarting education.” They experience in such a context different psychological, interactive, and behavioral challenges that sometimes make them adopt an anti-social position. The findings of this research contribute to a clearer understanding of the pathological aspects of unemployed graduates’ lives, which is considered a threat from their own viewpoints.

Elder abuse is the result of different socio-economic, cultural, psychological and individual factors. The aim of this study was to investigate the individual contexts which are relevant to elder abuse in a Kurdish rural community in Iran. The study was conducted based on qualitative approach. Potential and eligible participants consisting of 38 females and 18 males were selected through purposive sampling. Individual interviews as well as focus group discussions were applied for collecting data. Conventional content analysis was implemented by two independent researchers for analyzing data manually. Viewpoints of the participants were finally characterized into six themes including age, gender, interactive limitation, physical disability, multiple chronic difficulties, and adopting of passive status. The findings showed that personal conditions were the main factor which facilitate elder abuse and neglect. Learning the ethical norms and adopting supportive laws may eliminate all forms of neglect, abuse and violence against older people.