Self-blame Attributions of Patients: a Systematic Review Study

Introduction: Psychological aspects are important issues in patients that will have significant effects on disease progression. A new and important psychological concern is self-blame. This review was performed with the aim of systematic review on studies around patient's self-blame. Methods: This is a systematic review using international databases including PubMed (since 1950), Scopus (since 2004), Web of Sciences (since 1900), and ProQuest (since 1938) and Iranian databases including SID (since 2004) and Magiran (since 2001). Mesh terms including "patient," "regret," and "guilt" and non-Mesh terms including "self-blame attribution," "characterological self-blame," "behavioral self-blame," and "blame" were used in Iranian and international databases with OR and AND operators. Results: The review yielded 59 articles; 15 articles were included in the present study. The ages of patients ranged from 29-68.4 years. Most of studies (86.6%) had cross-sectional design and use characterological self-blame and behavioral self-blame variables for assessing self-blame attributions. The results showed that in most studies, a significant relationship among self-blame and psychological distress, anxiety, and depression were reported. Conclusion: A significant relation was reported between self-blaming and the degree of distress, anxiety, and depression in patients in most of the studies.