Chronic illness and emotional disturbance : a study to establish whether chronic illness, as a stress, causes emotional disturbance

Abstract

The research into chronic illness and emotional disturbance dealt with in this thesis is part of a joint project, undertaken by two second year students at the Maritime School of Social Work, and fulfills, in part, the requirements for the Master’s Degree in Social Work. In broad terms, this study will investigate whether chronic illness causes a significant degree of emotional disturbance because of interference with one’s life goals. The Victoria General Hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, was chosen as the setting from which data would be obtained. In order to obtain a workable sample from the total number of admissions, a random selection was made among the records of a chosen service—Surgery—for four given months in 1965—January, April, July and October. This selection was analyzed and the Chi squared (x[superscript 2]) Test For Two Independent Samples was applied. The level of significance was arbitrarily selected at .05. With the application of the test it was learned that the data did not support the hypothesis. Thus, the burden of the study became an exploration of limitations which might have caused the hypothesis to be rejected. These limitations were found in theory, in methodology and in the source of data.