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Covariation of physical and mental symptoms across illnesses: results of a factor analytic study
C E Schwartz1, R M Kaplan, J P Anderson
1Frontier Science & Technology Research Foundation, Inc., Chestnut Hill, MA 02467, USA.
Objective:
Chronic illnesses are associated with reports of symptoms, problems, and dysfunction along multiple dimensions. To determine if the dimensionality is disease-specific and whether physical and emotional symptoms are concomitant and inseparable aspects of the illness experience, we present a factor analysis of symptom and problem reports from five different chronic conditions.
Method:
People with five different conditions participated in this study: multiple sclerosis (MS) (n = 263), non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus (n = 420), nonhead nonneck injury trauma (n = 852), and a group of terminal patients comprised of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) (n = 99) and cancer (n = 74) patients. Participants were asked to complete the Quality of Well-Being Scale (QWB) and symptom items from the QWB were factor analyzed.
Results:
Both within each condition and across conditions, two factors accounted for the majority of the explained variance and could be described as an Observable Limitations factor and a Subjective Symptoms factor.
Conclusions:
Our factor analyses suggest that physical and emotional symptoms covary and are common to different types of illness.