Psychosocial aspect from thalassemia screening test of active-reproductive people in Tungsukhla subdistrict, Si Racha district, Chon buri province, Thailand

Abstract

This study was aimed to study the psychosocial aspect of active-reproductive people who came for a thalassemia-screening test during 2012 at Laem Chabang Hospital, Si Racha District, Chon Buri Province, Thailand. The psychosocial factors were investigated and analyzed against selected factors. One hundred and forty seven active-reproductive people selected by simple random sampling were used as samples for the thalassemia-screening test, where the specialist pediatrician gave them a counseling when they came to follow-up the results. Self-directory questionnaires were used for data collection. The questionnaires consisted of two parts dealing with personal and psychosocial aspect data, which were developed by researchers. Data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, exploratory factor analysis, and Mann-Whitney U test. It was found that the thalassemia-screening test yielded 35.1% of trait and 1.7% of disease. The hereditary group with trait and disease gene in the positive-test samples felt moderately frightened with doubts and anxiety. The body appearance of the positive group of participants was moderately healthy, whereas the normal group of participants felt relief at moderate levels, but still had slight feelings of doubt, fear and anxiety, while the body appearance was strongly healthy. The factor analysis found that 68.08% were related to three factors of psychosocial aspects, i.e., factor 1, which consisted of 13 items that related to “bad feeling”, factor 2, which consisted of seven items that related to “poor health”, and factor 3, which consisted of three items that related to the body appearance “look blue”. The comparisons regarding to the three factors of psychosocial aspect between the hereditary group and the normal group were statistically significant different at the level p < 0.05.