The effects of disease perceptions and psychological needs of patient sreceiving hemodialysis treatment on their attitudes to seek help

This This cross-sectional, descriptive study was conducted to evaluate the effect of hemodialysis patients perception of illness and basic psychological needs on help seeking attitudes. The population of this study consisted of 304 hemodialysis patients who received scheduled hemodialysis treatment in a dialysis unit of a training and research hospitaland a privatedialysis center, and th esample consisted of 258 hemodialysis patients. Personal ınformation form, disease perception scale, basic psychological needs scaleand help seeking attitude scale were used to collectthe data of the study. Data of the study; descriptive statistical analyzes (mean, standarddeviation, median, frequency, percentage, minimum, maximum), normal distributiontests, cronbachalpha, t test, One-wayAnova test, Pearson Correlation test, factoranalysis, multiple regression analysis were used. Statistical significance in difference sand relationships was accepted as p <0.05. Theaverageage of thepatients in the study was 58.07 ± 14.61, most of them; male (58.5%), married (69%), having children (77.1%) and graduated from primary education (45%), not working (85.3%), having medium income (57.7%), spouse and it was determined that he lived with his children (72.1%). It was determined that the treatment period was 6.93 ± 6.11 years on average, he had a chronic disease (66.7%) and had not received psychological support (87.6%) for his illness before. Negative significant correlations were found between the Total score of Help-Seeking Attitude and the Autonomyand Adequacy Needs from Basic Psychological Needs scores (p <0.05). It was determined that the variance of Help-Seeking Attitudes total scores caused an increase of 0.920 units in the total score of Type-B and 0.257 unit increase in the total score of theDiseasePerception of theCauses, anddecrease of 0.779 units in the total score of theType-A of theDisease (p. It was determined that the total scores of hemodialysis patients Attitude to Seeking Help differedac cording to thestate of having a close acquaintance with whom they could seek help, and the presence of a chronic disease, the scores of the patients with conic disease and those with whom they knew to seek help from their immediate surroundings were higher (p<0, 05). Keywords: Disease Perception, Psychological Need, Seeking Help