A Psychological Study on Helplessness and General Wellbeing Among Adult Patients of Different Chronic Illnesses

Chronic illness is any disorder that persists over a long period and affects the physical, emotional, intellectual, vocational, social and spiritual functioning. (Medical dictionary, 2009). The objective of the present study was to measure the helplessness and general wellbeing in adult patients of Arthritis, Essential Hypertension and Obesity. The total consisted of 120 subjects aged 18 years and above selected from the various hospitals of Ahmedabad city using the purposive sampling technique and were equally divided into 3 groups of chronic illnesses. The Helplessness scale (Mathur & Bhatnagar, 2012) and the P.G.I General Wellbeing Scale (Verma & Verma, 1989) were administered to the subjects. The student's t-test was used to statistically analyze the data. The results indicated that the female patients of arthritis and obesity showed more helplessness as compared to the male patients. Whereas the male patients of essential hypertension showed more helplessness as compared to the female patients of essential hypertension. The patients of obesity showed more helplessness as compared to the patients of arthritis and essential hypertension. The male patients of all the three chronic illness groups showed a better wellbeing level as compared to the female patients of all the three groups. The results on the general wellbeing measure indicated that there was no difference among the three groups of chronic illnesses.