Investigating the Role of Illness Perception as a Mediator Between Personality Variables and Quality of Life (QoL) in Patients With Heart Attack, A Cross-sectional Study

The perception of illness can affect a person’s mental health and ability to cope with illnesses. Meanwhile, personality traits can affect an individual’s lifestyle and quality of life (QoL). This study aims to investigate the role of illness perception as a mediator between personality variables and QoL in patients with a heart attack.

This was a cross-sectional study conducted on 193 patients with a heart attack at least 6 to 12 months before the study. The patients were selected via the available sampling method from the cardiovascular clinics of Shahid Chamran, Al-Zahra, and Khurshid hospitals in Isfahan City, Iran. The participants were evaluated using the scale of disease perception, the QoL questionnaire, and the 5-factor personality questionnaire. The data were analyzed by the path analysis method.

In this study, 128(66.32%) participants were male and 66(33.68%) were female, with an mean age of 61.4±10.7 years. In the personality dimensions, a significant relationship was observed between neuroticism and disease perception (RW=0.561, P=0.002); however, other personality dimensions had no significant relationship with disease perception. Disease perception had a significant and negative relationship with the quality of life (RW=-0.219, P=0.010). Two dimensions of extraversion (RW=0.755, P=0.000) and agreement (RW=-0.516, P=0.015) had a significant relationship with QoL.

 The results showed that personality variables independently affect the QoL, and only the features of anger, hostility, and worry in the form of neurotic dimensions have a negative effect on the QoL with a strong effect on the perception of the disease.