Graff LA, Walker JR, Clara I et al. Am J Gastroenterol 2009;104:2959–69.
This study compared psychological functioning and health perceptions in a community IBD patient sample with those in a matched community non-IBD sample of individuals. Overall, the IBD sample had lower psychological wellbeing and mastery, as well as higher distress levels than the non-IBD controls; however, those with quiescent disease were not significantly different from those without IBD in terms of psychological wellbeing, mastery, and distress. Psychological needs should therefore be a particular consideration in IBD patients with active disease.
This study compared a community IBD sample from the Manitoba IBD Cohort Study (n=388) with an age-, sex-, and region-matched non-IBD community sample drawn from the Canadian Community Health Survey (a census tool) to ascertain psychological functioning and health perceptions. Two key questions addressed by this research were how IBD subjects performed relative to population-based controls and how disease activity impacted on the factors being studied. Stress coping, distress, and mastery were all evaluated using validated survey tools. The sample was reasonably evenly split between ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn’s disease and 70% had experienced active disease over the prior 6 months.