Investigation of psychological aspects in long-term dialysis patients

Abstract

With the striking advances being made in the field of dialysis treatment, indications for dialysis have been further extended so that this method has become feasible for aged patients and those with diabetic renal failure, for whom the method had previously been considered unsuitable.
Consequently, dialysis patients have increased in number and there have been miscellaneous reports on psychological problems seen among them.
The authors have also reported on the psychological problems among dialysis patients who have been on long-term dialysis treatment for more than 10 years and have described the importance of maintaining a favorable rapport between patients and medical staff.
This paper reports the results of investigations on patients with diabetic renal failure accompanied by agonizing complications and physical conditions, dialysis of aged people, psychological aspects for better adaptation to the treatment and how to maintain dialysis on such patients without any trouble, as well as the psychological stresses inflicted and how to cope with them while giving necessary assistance to the patients.
As a result, it was revealed that both diabetic renal failure and chronic glomerulonephritis patients groups took their diseases “uneasily”. However, the diabetic renal failure patients expressed their fears for the disease in diverse ways, while the chronic glomerulonephritis patients showed their anxieties for the disease in the form of being “horrible” which was invariably common among them. In their daily lives the general behaviors of diabetic renal failure patients was usually “escapist”. On the other hand there were no statistically significant differences between the diabetic renal failure and chronic glomerulonephritis groups in terms of their attitudes towards dialysis treatment, reliance on medical staff and modern medicine and their desire for support in the course of receiving treatment.
Comparison between aged and younger dialysis patients revealed that the former ostensibly showed a “take-it-easy” attitude towards receiving dialysis treatment, while both groups were found to be in an almost similar condition psychologically concerning their desire for support in receiving dialysis treatment and accompanying agonizing problems, which indicated that both aged and younger patients had been subjected to an equal degree of psychological stress by the dialysis treatment itself.