思维方式与社区老年病人对疾病的认知

Thinking Style and Awareness of Disease among Community-based Elderly Patients

思维方式是处在不同文化中的个体和群体,在看待和处理问题时的认知特性的反映。本研究以中国人思维方式的结构为基础,探讨中国人的思维特性对老年病人心理与行为的影响。对160名老年病人进行调查发现,老年病人对疾病产生的认知与其思维方式有着密切的关系:思维矛盾性越强的老年病人,对社会支持的利用越多,也越能利用自身的应激机制应对疾病产生;思维变化性越强的老年病人,对社会支持的利用则越少。从疾病康复观念来看,思维联系性越强的老年病人,越强调外在支持因素和主观内在态度对疾病康复的价值;思维变化性高的老年病人则不看重外在支持因素和主观内在态度在康复方面的作用;思维矛盾性强的老年病人强调主观内在态度对康复的积极影响。研究同时也发现性别、年龄和受教育程度等因素和思维方式一起影响了老年病人对疾病产生和疾病康复因素的评价。研究证明了我们关于思维方式影响机制的假设,这些结果对人们理解老年病人身心健康有着重要的理论和现实意义。

The thinking style reflects the perceptual process and the cognitive pattern of individuals and groups from different cultural background when facing with problems.Since 1990 s,psychologists have compared the thinking style of Chinese and Americans and they found that westerners tended to engage more in analytic thinking,whereas Chinese preferred holistic thinking.Further research conducted by Hou and his colleges suggested that the holistic thinking included the holism,change and contradiction in information processing.Based on the structure of Chinese thinking style,the present study investigated the behavioral and psychological effect of the holistic thinking style on the elderly patients in the health-care field.160 elderly patients were investigated by the Chinese thinking style rating scale and the questionnaires on the factors of disease origin and disease rehabilitation,which are all prepared by our team.Then we found patients’awareness of the disease origin was highly correlated with their thinking styles.Elderly patients with stronger contradictory thinking styles tended to make more use of social support and their own stress mechanism;those who with stronger changeable thinking pattern tended to make less use of social support.From the perspective of disease rehabilitation,patients with stronger holistic thinking pattern emphasized the value of the external supportive factors and the internal attitude on the rehabilitation more;whereas patients with stronger changeable thinking did not admit the positive influence of the external supportive factors and the internal attitude on the rehabilitation.The study also found that,apart from thinking style,other factors(including gender,age and education level)simultaneously altered the elderly patients’awareness of the disease origin and disease rehabilitation.The study proved our hypothesis that thinking style could influence the mechanism and the results were valuable in the maintenance of an individual’s physical and mental health.