Psychology and its Contexts (Dec 2014)
Rheumatoid arthritis as psychic problem
Abstract
The article deals with the issue of psychic problems of rheumatoid arthritis patients. Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, inflammatory motor system disease with comprehensive impact on the patient's life. The disease is often considered an exclusively physical disease. But such approach is insufficient because the disease is accompanied by motor limitations of different intensities, by pain and by fatigue that cause considerable exhaustion to the patient. The patients often must give up their hobbies and in some cases even their jobs. In most serious cases, even common daily activities including self-servicing actions become an obstacle to the patient. It is therefore logical that the psyche of a patient with such disease is considerably strained. One of the partial goals of the study consisted in mapping the subjectively perceived quality of life of rheumatoid arthritis patients in facet 8, "negative feelings", and in ascertaining whether there is statistically significant relation to facets 1, "pain and discomfort", and 2, "energy and fatigue". Another goal consisted in comparing the subjectively perceived quality of life between men and women with rheumatoid arthritis, as well as between population of rheumatoid arthritis patients and control healthy population. The study was implemented within the research project of the Grant Agency of the University of South Bohemia in České Budějovice number 120/2012/S, "Reflection of quality of life in nursing", under use of two standardized questionnaires, WHOQOL-100 and HAQ. This article presents exclusively the data acquired based on the WHOQOL-100 questionnaire. The research set consisted of patients suffering from rheumatoid arthritis from all over the Czech Republic. The size of the set was determined by a statistician at 200 individuals suffering from the disease, in a ratio of 150 women and 50 men. The selection set was derived from the basic set of rheumatoid arthritis patients and can therefore be considered representative with regard to the whole Czech population of rheumatoid arthritis patients. The actual selection of respondents was carried out based on quota selection, at specifying two quotas: presence of the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis" and "gender". The data collection took place from January to May 2013. 214 questionnaires were distributed in total, to achieve the required return amount of 200. The return rate was 93,5 %. The statistical data analysis was performed in two stages. The first degree of data sorting was implemented in the SASD program (Statistic Analysis of Social Data); the second degree was implemented in the SPSS program (Statistical Package for the Social Science), version 15.0. It was ascertained based on the study that up to 90 % of respondents feel problems of different intensity in psychic area. 73,5 % of respondents perceive the problems as obstacle of different intensity to daily life. 66 % respondents reported actual feelings of depression. A very surprising finding consisted in the result of comparison of facet 8, "negative feelings", between the population suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and the control healthy population. Based on the comparison, it was found out that the control healthy respondents reported psychic problems in almost the same frequency and intensity as the rheumatoid arthritis patients. Such a high frequency and sameness to rheumatoid patients occurred probably due to wrong interpretation of the question from the respondents' perspective, particularly in healthy population that uses the term of "depression" relatively often for different common feelings of sadness and mood changes every person faces repeatedly in common life. It is not possible to admit that such a high percentage of healthy population suffers from actual depression. No statistically significant difference was found from the perspective of genders, based on comparison of results of facet 8, "negative feelings". Based on evaluation of relations between facet 8 (negative feelings) and facet 1 (pain and discomfort) and 2 (energy and fatigue), it was found out that there is statistically significant relation between the facets. It can be therefore accepted that patients feeling more intensive fatigue and pain experience more psychic problems and vice versa. The results evidence that therapy of rheumatoid arthritis as somatic disease is not sufficient and that comprehensive approach considering all patient's aspects should be applied in this area.
