Psychological well-being and chronic disease: |an investigation of quality of life in patients with Behçet's disease

Abstract

The main purpose of the present study was to investigate the effects of psychological actors, physical factors and personal characteristics on the dissatisfaction with medical condition and psychological well-being of patients with the chronic illness, Behc;et's Disease. A causal model was derived from the more general theory of Lazarus and Cohen (1976) and it was hypothesized that the disease-related variables interacting with personal characteristics indirectly affect psychological well-being through psychological mediators. The research was carried out in the Rheumatology Department of istanbul University, Cerrahp~a Medical Faculty. 69 male patients with Behc;et's I?isease (BD) were referred to the psychologist between April and July 1994, were given the Activities and Lifestyle Index, Trait Anxiety Inventory, Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, Psychological Well-Being Scale. Path analysis showed that the cognitive model emphasizing the mediating role of the psychological variables between environmental variables and psychological outcomes was not very useful in explaining the impact ofBD on health satisfaction and the quality of life (QOL). Rather, the multiple regression equations which included not only psychological variables but also environmental variables were more successful in explaining health satisfaction and QOL. Although the causal model explained only 5% of the variance in dissatisfaction with health and 15% of the variance in the QOL, the equation including direct effects of psychological variables and environmental variables explained 36% of the variance in dissatisfaction with health and 23% of the variance in QOL. The investigation of the direct and indirect effect of variables via path analysis was discussed.