Date of Award

12-1994

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Art

First Advisor

Marilyn Patterson

Second Advisor

Pamela Nickels

Third Advisor

Peter Smith

Abstract

In order to determine whether or not vertiginous and nonvertiginous Meniere's disease patients differ in regard to certain emotional and psychosocial attitudes, ideas, affects, and attributions related to illness behavior, 30 Meniere's disease patients (16 vertiginous; 14 nonvertiginous) completed the Illness Behavior Questionnaire (IBO) either at a Meniere's support group meeting or through the mail. Comparison of sample mean scores revealed that the vertiginous group showed greater hypochondriasis and affective disturbance than did the nonvertiginous group. The nonvertiginous group demonstrated greater denial of life stressors not related to illness and greater psychological (rather than somatic) perception. The same group showed a mild increase in irritability when compared to the vertiginous group. Both groups demonstrated similar affection inhibition. While some scales reflected higher scores by the vertiginous group and other scales reflected higher scores by the nonvertiginous group, the differences in sample scores indicated that Meniere's disease patients may exhibit some psychosomatic and somatopsychic features but have a preponderance to increased somatopsychic psychopathology directly related to the illness. Independent t-test results, however, indicated that in larger patient populations there may be no significant difference between mean scores.

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