Illness-related stigma and its effect on interaction anxiousness and general self-efficacy in outpatients with chronic viral hepatitis

Objective To investigate the illness-related stigma in outpatients with chronic viral hepatitis B and C and its effects on interaction anxiousness and general self-efficacy.Methods Forty-eight patients with chronic hepatitis B ( CHB),41 patients with chronic hepatitis C (CHC) and 29 healthy volunteers were enrolled.Hepatitis-related Stigma Questionnaire (HRSQ) produced by researchers was used to assess stigma in patients of both CHB and CHC.All patients and healthy volunteers were evaluated by Interaction Anxiousness Scale (IAS),General Self-efficacy Scale (GSES) and Simplified Coping Style Questionnaire (SCSQ).Results Hepatitis-related stigma was common in both CHB and CHC.The most common positive items and their percentages of CHB and CHC were "rejection in job seeking" (81.2％,75.6％ )," keeping conditions about hepatitis secret" (72.9％,75.6％ ),"feeling discrimination in society" (66.7％,56.1％ ) and "rejection in mate selection" (60.4％,61.0％ ),and the rarest ones and percentages were "feeling lowest stress together with patients with the same disease" (35.4％,31.7％ ) and "being understood only by patients with the same disease" (33.3％,26.8％ ).Differences of positive percentages of any items between CHB and CHC were not statistically significant (P ＞0.05 ).One-way ANOVA showed that difference of IAS scores among three groups of participants was not statistically significant ;and GSES score of CHB(2.41 ± 0.45 )was not statistically different from that of CHC (2.49 ±0.60 ),but they both were lower than that of healthy control (2.78 ± 0.52) (F=4.648,P =0.011 ).The multivariate stepwise regression analysis showed that the item "feeling much different from others" of HRSQ entered the formula of CHB IAS score (B =4.861,adjustment R2 =0.106),and the item "being understood only by patients with the same disease" of HRSQ entered the formula of CHC IAS score (B =6.745,adjustment R2 =0.113);negative coping dimension score of SCSQ ( B =- 0.424),the item "feeling discrimination in society" ( B =-0.359) and "feeling lowest stress together with patients with the same disease" ( B =-0.274) entered the formula of CHB GSES score (adjustment R2 =0.280).Conclusion Illness-related stigma is common in outpatients with chronic viral hepatitis,which probably raises patients' interaction anxiousness and weakens the general selfefficacy of patients with hepatitis B and C. Key words: Illness behavior;  Social adjustment;  Health education