A study on psychological morbidity of cancer patients and chronic kidney disease patients

Abstract

Background: Cancer disease is a dangerous illness that causes about12% of deaths throughout the world. Increasing to 54% of all deaths by the year 2025. Recent international data show that there were 10 million new cases, 6 million deaths, and 22 million people living with cancer in 2000. In addition to physiological problems, the patient faces at large too many inherent problems by the family and society. Methods: A Hospital-based cross-sectional study was carried out among the people aged 18 to 70 years from the selected study area. The sample size was determined based on a prior study of the mean score of these three psychological variables anxiety, depression, stress. data was collected by using hospital anxiety depression scale and presumptive stressful life event scale.Results: In our study, The percentage of mean depression and stress level before 1 year were higher (11.49±2.76) (64.12±85.28) in CKD patients than cancer patients (10.86±2.51) (39.57±56.60), and the difference was found to be statistically significant (t=2.119, p=0.035) (Z=2.327, p=0.020) but the mean percentage of anxiety (7.43±3.21) and stress during past 1 year (317.46±87.95) were higher in cancer patients than CKD patients (5.63±2.82) (266.01±87.26). Conclusions: Based on our findings we may conclude that cancer patients have inclined to various psychological problems particularly depression, anxiety, and stress as compared to CKD. The depression and stress level before 1 year in CKD patients were more than that of cancer patients but anxiety and stress level during past 1 year was found more in cancer patients than that of CKD patients. Cancer thoroughly breaks the patients psychologically as well as biologically.