Features of post-traumatic stress disorder, resilience and attitude to the disease in patients of different groups (on the example of oncological and cardiovascular diseases)

Abstract

There is a steady increase in oncological diseases all over the world. Malignant tumors are one of the most frequent causes of death in the population of developed countries. The article presents the results of an empirical study aimed at studying the features of post-traumatic stress disorder, resilience and attitude to the disease in patients with oncological and cardiovascular diseases. The study sample consisted of 80 people aged 40 to 73 years. The average age is 58 years. The sample included 40 patients with cancer and 40 patients with diseases of the cardiovascular system. The study involved able-bodied men and women who are fluent in Russian, without cognitive disorders. Statistically significant differences were found between the groups. Patients with cancer are more likely to relive what happened when reminded of a traumatic event, the orientation of the personality is characterized by avoiding everything that reminds of a traumatic experience, post-traumatic stress disorder is expressed. The feeling of self-safety is more typical for patients with cardiovascular diseases than for cancer patients. The latter are more characterized by oppressive uncertainty. If we talk about the types of response to the disease, then among cancer patients there is more often post-sleep anxiety, they think about complications; there is excessive concentration on subjective painful and other unpleasant sensations; behavior like "irritable weakness"; dejection, therefore disbelief in the possibility of recovery and improvement of the condition, as well as in general on the effectiveness of treatment, pessimistic a look at everything around; vulnerability. Exposing experiences and sufferings to relatives and others prevails in cancer patients in comparison with patients of the cardiovascular group.