Adjustment to coronary heart disease : the role of individual resources

Objectives: To extract the group of patients that are homogenous in regards to psychosocial adjustment to the coronary heart disease and to specify the correlates that help or inhibit the adjustment process. Methods: The group of 246 male patients with coronary heart disease were included into the studies. All participants were examined using the Cardiac Adjustment Scale (Rumbaugh) and NEO-FFI, Multidimensional Health Locus of Control Scale, The Jenkins Activity Survey in the Polish adaptation. It was also analyzed the impact of duration of the disease, method of the treatment, numbers of hospitalizations and the presence of pain. Results: The studies have confirmed that the neuroticism is the essential correlate of the adjustment. The highest adjustment level was indicated among patients characterized with low neuroticism and high extraversion. The lowest adjustment to the disease was observed among those whose neuroticism was accompanied by the belief that other external factors or chance influence their health. Nuisance resulted from the disease affected the adjustment process among patients characterized by average and low intensity of neuroticism. Conclusions: The adjustment to the coronary heart disease is the result of the interaction between personality traits and correlates directly resulted from the disease. Patients with relatively higher level of neuroticism may be at risk of maladjustment and for those patients should be developed early psychological interventions