Effects of a Health-Seeking Behavior Education Program Based on Motivational Interview Techniques on Health-Seeking Behaviors, Illness Self-Management, and Anxiety in Elderly Immigrant Women: A Randomized Controlled Study

Pınar Harmancı ^1* Yasemin SAZAK ¹ Semra Bulbuloglu ²

• ¹ kahramanmaraş istiklal üniversitesi, Dulkadiroğlu, Türkiye
• ² Istanbul Aydın University, Istanbul, Türkiye

Introduction: Whether voluntary or forced, migration always affects those who migrate.Migrants experience the negative effects of migration more severely if they are older, chronic patients, or women. If a group of migrants possess all these vulnerabilities, they need more assistance and healthcare.Objective: This study was carried out to investigate the effects of a health-seeking behavior education program based on motivational interview techniques on health-seeking behaviors, illness self-management, and anxiety in elderly migrant women.This study was conducted with a randomized controlled experimental design involving an experimental group (n=18) and a control group (n=18). The simple random sampling method was chosen to ensure that the groups were randomly distributed and had the same number of participants. A "Personal Information Form", the "Health-Seeking Behaviors Scale", the "Health Anxiety Inventory", and the "Chronic Illness Self-Management Scale" were used to collect data. The intervention consisted of four structured seasons. In addition, the main themes were also covered with Motivational Interviewing (MI) techniques within these seasons.Results: Before the intervention (pretest), no significant differences were found between the groups in health-seeking behaviors, health anxiety, or chronic illness self-management (p>0.05). In the posttest, the control group showed a significant decrease in total Health-Seeking Behaviors Scale scores and in professional and traditional health-seeking behaviors (p<0.05), while online health-seeking behaviors did not significantly change (p>0.05).Additionally, the control group's self-stigma and other chronic illness self-management dimensions worsened (p<0.05). In contrast, the experimental group showed significant improvements in total health-seeking behaviors, particularly in online and professional behaviors (p<0.05). They also showed reductions in health anxiety and self-stigma, with improvements in chronic illness self-management dimensions such as coping with stigma and treatment adherence (p<0.05). Intergroup comparisons revealed that the experimental group had significantly better outcomes in all these areas compared to the control group (p<0.05).The study highlights that migration negatively affects healthseeking behaviors, especially in elderly migrant women. However, the health-seeking behavior education program based on motivational interviewing techniques proved to be effective in improving these behaviors, illness self-management, and reducing anxiety. This suggests the need for targeted interventions to support vulnerable migrant populations.