Scientific Journal of

Abstract

Background and Objectives

Thalassemia is a kind of anemia that causes the patient's malformation of face and lips. As a result, the patient's mental image will be distorted, which can increase the risk for hopelessness among the patients. Recently‚ research efforts have started to be conducted on the patients’ mental health conditions to which the health officials are urged to attend. The present article studied the correlation between mental image and hopelessness in 10-21 year old patients who suffer from major thalassemia in Shahrekord.

Materials and Methods

In this correlational-descriptive study, the subject community included those 10-21 year old patients with major thalassemia who had referred to teaching universities of Shahrekord University of Medical University 110 patients participated in the study and their mental image and hopelessness were both measured via two distinctive questionnaires (the Offer self-image and the Beck hopelessness scale). The data were gathered, analyzed, and investigated using parametric and non-parametric methods.

Results

The findings indicated that 66.7% of  the patients had average mental image and 37.3% were somehow hopeless. Thus, there was a significant correlation between the mental image average and that of hopelessness (r = 0.554, p < 0.001).

Conclusions

To help these kind of patients overcome their problems, it is necessary to improve their awareness level by (1) providing nursing and psychosis consultative services and the related training courses (2) broadcasting training and consultative programs on radio and TV channels, and (3) offering remedial-clinical services.