Illness Intrusiveness on Sexuality and Its Influencing Factors in Rheumatoid Arthritis Women

류마티스 관절염 여성환자의 성생활에 관한 지각된 질병의거변화와 영향요인

This study was conducted to clarify the effect of physical ability, pain, fatigue, depression, sexual satisfaction, and spouse criticism on the sexual intrusiveness of rheumatoid arthritis(RA)women. The subjects of the study were 89 RA outpatients who visited the department of rheumatology of Dong-A University Hospital in Pusan from March 2000 to April, 2000. Pain & Fatigue via graphic rating scale, depression via CES-D(Center for Epidemiologic Studies -Depression) scale and physical ability via the Health Assessment questionnaire(HAQ) were assessed. Also we used both Sexual satisfaction scale(Kim, et al, 1997) to measure sexual satisfaction and Spouse criticism scale(Kraaimaat et al. 1996) to measure spouse criticism. The Intrusiveness rating scale which was derived from Arthritis Impact Measurement Scale(AIMS) was used to measure illness intrusiveness in sexuality. The relationships between the variables such as pain, depression, fatigue, physical ability, spouse criticism, sexual satisfaction and illness intrusiveness on sexuality were analyzed by Pearson correlation. As a result, pain & depression were significantly positively related to illness intrusiveness and physical ability & sexual satisfaction was significantly negatively related to illness intrusiveness. But these variables were interrelated. So hierarchical regression was performed to examine the relative contribution of pain, depression, physical ability, and sexual satisfaction with regard to intrusiveness of RA on sexuality. It revealed that pain, depression & sexual satisfaction predicted significantly illness intrusiveness on sexuality. Therefore it is very important to reduce pain and depression and to increase sexual satisfaction for reducing illness intrusiveness.