Yaw-Sheng Lin
En-ChangWu
Department of Psychology National Taiwan University
The study surveyed 119 chronical outpatients, explored the structures of illness-control beliefs, the degrees of relatively perceived control among different domains, and patient’s life adjustment states. After factor analysis, we found there were four-factor structures in illness-control beliefs; namely, interpretation/prediction, sense of self-efficacy, other-directed mastery and instrumental rationality. According to the results, it showed the patients with the illness-control beliefs of interpretation/prediction and sense of self-efficacy tended to have a better life adjustment states, yet the patients with the illness-control beliefs of other-directed mastery and instrumental rationality got the contrary outcomes. In the nine dimensions of control targets, the patients felt they could control better than the medical staff on the domains of “everyday life” from their illness experiences. But on the domains of “medical regime”, they perceived the medical staff got more power to control. Finally, we pointed out the dialectics of control over chronic illness, and discussed the implications in the clinical practice regarding the research results.
Keywords: chronic illness, illness-control beliefs, relatively perceived control, life adjustment states