The death drive and mentalization in patients with romatoid arthritis: A projective study

The main objective of this work is to study romatoid artridis patients' mental state, for death drive that reminds psicosomatic mechanism and mentalisation, with projective testing. In Turkey, even though there are studies for psychological effects on patients with auto-immune diseases such as romatoid artiritis illness, there is no national publication on psychosomatical mechanism with romatoid artiritis with inclusion of projective tests. This, this study holds originality. This study is done with 15 volunteer women with ages 25 to 45, that have applied to the Romatology Policlinic and received diagnosis on romatoid artiritis. The contestants were given Rorschach Test and TAT after half-configured psycho-analytic pre-interview, and these equipments are reviewed by the French School specific content analysis. As per the findings of the study, the women with romatoid artiritis have found out to be with, concrete level of designs, sembolisation and dream capabilities to be limited, in their state of mind the death drive mechanism is prominent, impulsive and depressive sensories inability to be mechanised, have been observed. With this, the study has pointed out that phychological mechanisms of RA patients who suffer from physical diseases. Mental and physical health should be regarded as a whole, and only taking phsical health into hand will lead to some deficiencies in treatment, therefore the importance of multidisciplinary studies in RA patients have been reviewed. Keywords: Rheumatoid Arthritis, Death İmpulse, Psychosomatic, Autoimmune, Mentalization, Roschach Test, TAT