• The Journal of Korean Academic Society of Nursing Education
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.253-263
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• 2003

Rheumatoid arthritis patients not only suffer from the physical damage, but they are afflicted severely mental and psychologic after effects. Their depression and low self-esteem eventually yields serious mental damages, which makes difficult for them to recover. The states of mental health of arthritis patients are diversified depending on the characters and surrounding circumstances, although they may have suffered from the similar condition. Therefore this research was conbucted to the factors that can give positive influences to the patients. In recent time, social support for the arthritis patients has become an important factor that can positively influence their mental health. In other words, social support can act as an important environmental system for arthritis patients to recover their damaged mental health. In order to fulfill this purpose, 118 patients were examined to identify the relationship between the variables. The summary of the result obtained from the research is as follow: 1. The structural aspect of social support for arthritis patients showed the most of them had various social support network size and their highest support system were 'family', 'relative' and 'friends'. The functional aspect of social support for arthritis patients showed moderate degree and their highest sub component was 'approval'. 2. High correlation was found between duration of relationship, similarity, frequency of meeting and functional support. There was no relationship between depression, self-esteem and social support. 3. Therefore this research has suggested that nurses who care rheumatoid arthritis patient consider the above condition to develop self-help group.