Quality of life among women with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis: the role of symptoms, personality and coping strategies

Pocrnić, Martina. (2017). Quality of life among women with Hashimoto’s thyroiditis: the role of symptoms, personality and coping strategies. Diploma Thesis. Filozofski fakultet u Zagrebu, Department of Psychology. [mentor Vukasović, Tena].

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Abstract

Hashimoto's thyroiditis (HT) is chronic autoimmune thyroid inflammation, which is the most common cause of hypothyroidism in areas with sufficient iodine intake. Despite its high prevalence, research on quality of life on patients with HT are quite rare. The aim of this study is to examine the role of the presence of symptoms, personality traits and coping strategies on health-related quality of life in people with HT. The survey was conducted using an online questionnaire on a sample of 528 adult women. The following instruments were used: BFI for personality assemssment, COPE Brief for evaluation of coping strategies and Quality of life questionnaire for patients with thyroid disease for assessing the quality of life and the presence of symptoms. The results show that participants achieve the highest scores on fatigue, anxiety and hypothyroid symptoms scales on Quality of life questionnaire for patients with thyroid disease. Hierarchical regression analysis suggested that all predictors together explains about two thirds of the quality of life variation. The greater presence of goitre symptoms, hyperthyroid symptoms and hypothyroid symptoms, higher scores on the scale of neuroticism and lower on extraversion and agreeableness, and more use of the avoidance coping predicts imparied quality of life. The most improtant predictor was neuroticism. Findings are generally consistent with similar research and have important practical implications.

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