A Study on Pain, Discomfort, Depression and Coping Patterns in Chronic Arthritis Patients

만성관절염 환자의 동통, 불편감, 우울과 대응양상의 관계

The purpose of this study was to assess pain, discomfort, depression and coping patterns and the relations between these in chronic arthritis patients. The sampling method was a purposive sampling technique. 1) Who have been diagnosed as having chronic arthritis and. 2) Who were at the out patients clinic of rheumatoid arthritis departments of one University hospital in seoul between september, 11, 1993 to september, 18, 1993. The instruments used for this study were Graphic Rating Scales of pain, discomfort level of the activities of daily living(ADL) developed by Lee, Eun Ok and The Beck Depression inventory. The research used to measure coping patterns was a tool developed by the present study researcher. Analysis of data was done frequency, Pearson correlation coefficients, ANOVA, regression and ANCOVA. The results were summerlized as follows ; 1. Female exceed male patients in number and onset of joint pain were more prevalent in the age groups of the 40s and the 50s. The average duration of suffering from the pain were seven years six mounths. 2. The mean pain score : The mean sensory score was 119mm and the affective score was 109mm. 3. The discomfort level of ADL, the mean score was 2.95 out of a possible score of 5.0 and depression syndrome subjects were 62.2%. 4. The coping responses for each pattern were as follows : 1) "Active coping" mean score was 2.28. 2) "Wishful coping" mean score was 2.89. 3) "Receptive coping" mean score was 3.31. 4) "Negative coping" mean score was 1.82. 5. Significant differences were found in age, religion, marriage status and the coping patterns of patients. 1) In the coping pattern of "receptive coping", the score of the age groups of the 50s were higher than that of 20s, and in the coping pattern of "negative coping", the score of the age groups of the 20s were higher than other age groups. 2) In the coping pattern of "wishful coping", the score of the christian were higher than other religion groups. 3) In the coping pattern of "negative coping", the score of the marrieds were lower than other groups. 6. Patients who scored low on factor 2, wishful coping, were much more likely to report having pain sensory than patioets scoring high on this factor. 7. Patients who scored high on factor 4, negative coping, were significantly more likely to report having pain sensory than patients scoring high on this factor. Consider overall, chronic arthritis patients report using a wide varity of strategies, certain strategies such as receptive, wishful and active coping are used frequently, whereas other strategies such as negative coping are rarely used. One of the most important finding of present study is that the reported use of coping strategies is related to adjustment to a chronic pain problem. The present study suggests that negative coping is related to poor emotional adjustment as assessed by depression, but not pain ratings. Considered overall, this pattern of findings suggests that counseling patients to decreased their use of negative coping may be useful. The present study has a number of limitations. First, the sample is restricted to chronic arthritis patients. Weather chronic pain patients suffering from other types of pain syndromes use similar coping strategies needs to be determined in subsequent research. Second, the tool of coping pattern must be studied further to obtain reliability.