Personality and suffering in the hospitalized chronically ill

Abstract

The development of studies correlating personality traits with suffering in illness can be very useful to understand the chronically ill response in a transitional health/ disease process. Do the “subjective experiences of suffering in disease” correlate with personality traits of the hospitalized chronically ill? Do sociodemographic, familiar and clinical variables correlate with personality traits of the hospitalized chronically ill? The purpose of the study is to understand which “personality” traits are present in the hospitalized chronically ill, and the correlation with the “subjective experiences of suffering”, sociodemographic, familiar and clinical variables. This is a nonexperimental, cross-sectional descriptive-correlational and quantitative study, used in a non-probabilistic convenience sample of 307 hospitalized chronically ill. Data were collected through a questionnaire between January and June 2013. It was requested the permission of the Hospital de São Teotónio´s ethics committee, as well as the informed consent of each participant. Data processing was performed statistically. The participants in our study had higher values of "neuroticism" than those of the authors of the NEO-FFI-20 inventory. The variable "conscientiousness" explains 12.5% of the variance of "suffering". "Openness to experience", is associated inversely with the experience of "suffering”, which is when it increases hope and “openness to experience”, decreases the "suffering" of the chronically ill. The evidence invites us to reflect on the influence of intrinsic factors in suffering. Patients deal with life/ disease in many diferent ways, wich affects the response to the transitional health/ disease process.