Psychologically meaningful activity, illness intrusiveness, and quality of life in rheumatic diseases

✍ Scribed by Devins, Gerald M.

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2006
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 43 KB
• Volume: 55
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0004-3591
• DOI: 10.1002/art.21854

✦ Synopsis

Chronic disabling disease compromises quality of life. Among the factors most widely recognized as responsible for such effects among people with rheumatic conditions are pain, disability, and a host of ensuing psychological changes (e.g., helplessness, hopelessness, and depression). Disease and disability are generally believed to compromise quality-of-life outcomes directly. In an important new contribution in this issue (1), Abraı ´do-Lanza and Revenson build on earlier work (2) to further the case that compromised quality of life is more consistently due to illness-induced disruptions to lifestyles, activities, and interests (i.e., illness intrusiveness [3,4]) than it is to the direct effects of functional disability or other disease and treatment variables.

Abraı ´do-Lanza and Revenson's study valuably extends earlier work documenting illness intrusiveness as a fundamental determinant of quality of life in chronic disabling conditions (5) by examining the important refinement that the illness-induced loss of activities and interests compromises quality of life to the extent that affected domains are highly valued and central to the patient's sense of self. The researchers observed that illness intrusiveness was especially deleterious in relation to quality-of-life outcomes when it impinged on 2 roles, parent and worker, when these roles were highly valued by people with rheumatic disease. Therefore, the benefits of supportive psychosocial interventions may be maximized when efforts target the patient's most highly valued life domains. Not all of Abraı ´do-Lanza and Revenson's results supported their hypothesis, however. Rheumatic disease patients valued a third role, the spouse, to the same extent