[Mood and illness-related stress in dialysed patients]

The aim of the paper was to evaluate the mood and attitude to the illness-related stress and correlations between them among patients treated with haemodialysis (HD) or continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis (CAPD). The following psychological questionnaires were used: the Cognitive Stress Appreciation Questionnaire (CSAQ), the Social Appreciation Questionnaire and the Profile of Mood States. The total of 26 HD (17M, 9F) and 28 CAPD (17M, 11F) patients were studied. The control group (CONTR) consisted of 48 (26M, 22F) healthy volunteers who filled the questionnaires as if they had a "bad cold". The dispositional attitude to the stress was similar in the studied groups. The dialysed patients evaluated their disease-related stress mainly as a threat as compared to the healthy volunteers (p < 0.01). Additionally, HD patients evaluated their disease as a loss as compared to the CAPD group and CONTR group (p < 0.05). In HD and CAPD patients Confusion-Bewilderment had significantly higher values in comparison to the healthy group (p < 0.01), whereas only HD group had higher values of Fatigue-Inertia as compared to CAPD and control groups (p < 0.01). Additionally our results showed a significant correlation between evaluation of renal disease as a loss and Fatigue--Inertia emotion in the HD group (r = 0.89; p < 0.01). From the psychological point of view CAPD seems to be better than HD, since the patients treated by this method evaluated better their mood and illness-related stress, similarly as the healthy volunteers suffering from acute infectious disease.