Mental health and sense of coherence among Swedish adults with cystic fibrosis

The purpose of this study was to describe mental health among adult Swedish patients with cystic fibrosis (CF) and to study if mental health and the salutogene factor sense of coherence (SOC) intercorrelate with good medical status. Women and men were compared. The patient group (n = 59) attended the Stockholm CF Center. Mental health was measured with the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28) and the salutogenesis by SOC-3. Medical status included forced vital capacity and forced expiratory volume in 1 second in per cent of predicted as well as Body Mass Index. The differences within and between groups were tested with t-tests and the relations between the variables were described by Spearman's correlation coefficient. The patients had on the whole good mental health, but the group with a risk of mental ill-health (n = 19) experienced life as difficult to manage, meaningless and hard to understand compared to the group with a small risk of mental ill-health (n = 40). Women at risk of mental ill-health (n = 10) experienced difficulties in managing life to a greater extent than women with a small risk of mental ill-health (n = 16). Men at risk of mental ill-health (n = 9) found life hard to understand. Mental health and SOC did not correlate significantly with the medical status of the CF patients. The conclusion was that there were comparably few problems of mental health among the patients with CF. The problems that were found were not related to the seriousness of their CF. Women had a more complex pattern of problems in mental health and SOC than men had.