Weighing your Treatment Decisions

Thinking about your goals, decide on two or three possible negative treatment effects that are most important to you for each treatment you’re considering. For each treatment, decide how they rank for your two or three most important negative effects.

Now,  consider  these  questions:

• What treatment options can I exclude? Why?
• What treatment option(s) are most likely to meet my main goals?
• What treatment option(s) do I feel most confident about?

Finally, consider the uncertainties and the impacts of your choices:

• How do I feel about any uncertainties in what experts say about the treatment(s) I’m considering? How does this affect my comfort level with each treatment?
• How do I feel about the other kinds of impacts on me or my loved ones if I take this treatment (e.g., need to travel, impact on finances)? What are the important impacts to me? Can I list them in order, from most to least important? How do they apply to my preferred treatment options?
• Can I identify which treatment options I feel most confident about and why?

Take some time to think about your life circumstances, goals, as well as the people most important to you. Use these questions as a guide:

• Does my age make a difference to my treatment options?
• Does being male, female, intersex, or trans make a difference to my treatment options?
• Do I have any other physical or mental health problems that could affect the type of treatment that may be best for me?
• Do I have medical coverage to pay for the treatment or can I afford it?
• Could my daily routines — related to family, work, where I live — affect whether I am able to take the treatment as recommended?
• Are there important people in my life that could or should influence my decision? If so, who are they and what is their role?
• Which treatment(s) may help me achieve my goals?
• Which treatment(s) do I have most confidence in? Why?
• Which treatment(s) best suit my own circumstances? Why?
• Which treatment(s) do I have least confidence in? Why?
• Which treatment(s) least suit my goals and my circumstances?

Lastly, recheck your thinking. What else – rightly or wrongly – might have affected your thinking and decisions? For example:

• My emotions: fear, hope, feeling frustrated or desperate.
• The way people I care about are feeling.
• My assumptions – or other people’s assumptions – about the treatments or about other things related to my psoriatic condition. Are those assumptions reasonable? Are they still valid based on what I know now?