Chia-Ying Weng
Department of Psychology National Chung-Cheng University
The study chooses end-stage renal disease patient samples less than 55 years old who had dialysis cure within two years. We have 82 interviewees. Experienced clinical psychologists use a structured questionnaire to conduct interviews. The contents of the questionnaire include “patient role identification scale” and the relative change of selfevaluation and psychological centrality of eight self domains.
We use “patients role identification scale” to select 17 resistance and 36 acceptance stage patients for comparison analysis. The result indicates that present global self-esteem of the two groups compare with that of before the disease has a significant decrease. In the self-evaluation relative change scale, the acceptance stage patients drop the scale dramatically when disease onset and come back slowly but not the level as before. The resistance stage patients evaluate themselves as no significant differences than before and expect they can get well as before. In psychological centrality relative change scale, the acceptance stage patients realize that nothing is so important except “health status” and “supports from family”. Even though the resistance stage patients have the same duration of disease they still can’t adjust their psychological centrality of self domains as those patients in acceptance stage. The results indicate that the differences of self- evaluation and psychological centrality between two groups are due to social identity of patients.
Keywords: chronic disabled patients, early adjustment stage, self-esteem, end-stage renal disease.