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KMID : 0376219810180020331
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Chonnam Medical Journal
1981 Volume.18 No. 2 p.331 ~ p.348
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Psychological Study of Leprosy Patients
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Abstract
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Many factors, including social rejection, family problems, loss of educational opportunity, fear, prejudice and ignorance, compound the inherent psychological stress of leprosy. In the light of these problems this present study was undertaken to evaluate the psychological status of leprosy patients. The subjects of the present study were 205 patients staying at home, 220 patients admitted to a hospital, 340 patients living in resettlement villages and 304 control people living in similar isolated areas to resettlement villages. A self report symptom inventory, SCL-90(symptom check list-90) was used and the groups were analysed and compared by many factors.
The results of this study are as follows.
1. All dimensional scores of the leprosy group were much higher than the control group. Especially the depressional score was most different between control and leprosy group. This result indicates a significantly heightened incidence of psychological problems among leprosy patients.
2. There were significant differences between each leprosy group; ambulatory, inpatient and resettlement patient, in all dimensional scores except in interpersonal sensitivity dimension. As a whole, the ambulatory patient group showed the lowest scores and the resettlement patient group showed the highest scores.
3. In the control group, subjects over 30 years old had higher scores for somatization (p<0.01) and psychoticism-(p<0.05) dimensions, while those under 30 years old had a higher score for the interpersonal sensitivity (p<0.05) dimension. However the leprosy group showed no significant relationship between age and dimensional scores.
4. In the control group, there was no significant difference between sexes, and similarly in the leprosy group, no significant difference was noted between sexes, except for somatization (p<0.01) and phobic-anxiety (p<0.05) dimensions, for which female patients had higher scores than male patients.
5. In contast with the control group, leprosy patients of low educational status generally showed higher dimensional scores than patients of high educational status.
6. In the control group, there was no significant difference between religious and non-religious persons. In the ambulatory patient group, religious patients had higher dimensional scores than nonreligious patients but in inpatient and resettlement patient groups, non-religious patients had higher dimensional scores than religious patients.
7. In contrast with the control group, leprosy patients who had grown up in a city showed lower scores in all dimensions; except obsessive-compulsive, interpersonal sensitivity and depression dimensions; than patiens growing up in the country.
8. Analysed by marital status, generally, patients who were divorced or had lost their spouse showed the highest scores; married patients had middle range scores; and unmarried patients showed the lowest scores.
9. Lepromatous patients showed slightly higher scores than non-lepromatous patients, but there was no´ significant differences.
10. Analysed by job at the beginning of disease, patients without a regular occupation showed the lowest scores, student patients showed mid range, and patients with a job showed the highest scores. There were significant differences for somatization (p<0.01), phobic anxiety (p<0.01) and paranoid (p<0.05) dimensional scores.
11. Analysed by result of skin smear, there was no significant difference between positive and negative patients.
12. Analysed by degree of deformity, there were significant differences only for somatization and depression dimensions. As the degree of deformity increased, somatization and depression scores were higher.
13. There was no significant difference between the patients who developed leprosy before and after 20 years of age.
14. Compared according to duration of treatment, among ambulatory patients, dimensional scores rose in patients treated for 1 to 4 years, decreased in patients treated for 5 to 9 years, and rose again in patients treated over 10 years.
15. There was no significant difference in dimensional scores according to duration of hospitalization or living in a resettlement village.
16. As the time from onset of disease to hospitalization increased, the dimensional scores tended to be higher.
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