A Study on Disease Characteristics, Psycho-social Factors and Treatment Behavior of Patients with Lupus

루푸스 환자의 질병특성, 심리사회적요인 및 치료 행태

This study was conducted to describe disease characteristics, psycho-social factors and treatment behavior of patients with lupus and to analyze relationships anions these variables. The subjects were consisted of 120 lupus patients at G university hospital in Seoul. Data were collected by means of structured interview with questionnaires, and analyzed by using frequencies, $x^2$test, t-test, ANOVA, and correlation. The results were as follows; 1. The average age of the subjects was 31.34 years and average duration of suffering lupus was about 7.3years. Severity of symptoms was moderate and the disturbance of living activities was at the very low level. 2. Self-efficacy score of lupus patients was high, and life satisfaction was at moderate level. 3. Dosage for most of the subjects was about twice a day. 16.7% of them took non-prescribed medicine and only 27.5% perform exercise. 4. Positive correlation was shown among symptom, discomfort of living activities, self-efficacy and life satisfaction, while there was negative correlation among symptom and self-efficacy, symptom and life satisfaction, discomfort of living activities and self-efficacy, and discomfort of living activities and life satisfaction. In addition, exercise showed significant relationship with discomfort of living activities, and non-prescribed medicine showed significant relationship with discomfort of living activities and self-efficacy. These results show that lupus is a chronic disease of long suffering duration among young people. Severity of the symptom was at modest level, while discomfort of living activities were relatively insignificant. However self-efficacy was relatively high. Furthermore self-efficacy has influences on symptom and discomfort of life activities, just as exercise affects discomfort of life activities. Therefore it is required to examine further measures for continuous exercise.