Effect of positive therapy in the management of stress and general well-being among patients undergoing Hemodialysis

Pages: 965-967
V. Kavitha and Hemalatha (Department of Psychology, Avinashilingan Institute for Home Science and Higher Education for Women, Coimbatore )
Aditi Gupta (Department of Psychology, Tamanna Nai Disha, New Delhi)

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is a progressive, debilitating, chronic illness that affects quality of life, potentially influencing physical and mental health, functional status, independence, general well-being, personal relationships and social functioning. Not only does it cause significant morbidity, but it also has a high mortality. Because of the costs and the complexity of its treatment, very few patients are able to obtain adequate treatment, and CKD places a heavy financial burden on any society. Because it requires life-long treatment in the form of renal replacement therapy, the quality of life (QOL) of patients may significantly impair. Studies have revealed that patient education can play a significant role in improving the QOL in these patients. The aim of the study was to find the influence of Stress on general Well-being in Haemodialysis (HD) patients and to identify the effectiveness of Positive Therapy. Purposive Sampling method was used to collect data from 40 HD Patients using Stress Inventory (Hemalatha and Nandhini, 2004) and General Well-being Index (WHO, 1998). All the patients, who had high Stress and low General Well-being were given psychological intervention called Positive Therapy over a period of 2 weeks followed by reassessment. Patients receiving HD identified limitations in a number of areas including vitality and significantly lower physical functioning. The results revealed that many patients had high stress due to fear, worry and anger about the illness. Positive Therapy helped to bring down the mean stress of the sample from high (22.55) to low (6.22). The result also reveals that 89% of the subjects had an enormous improvement in their General Well-being after undergoing Positive Therapy.