Psychosocial Factors in Patients with Thyroid Disease

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to map the psychosocial aspects of thyroid disease (TD). The background of this work is health psychology and positive psychology. While extensive attention has been dedicated to this problem abroad, hardly any data are currently available from Czech patients. The performed research is in such a stage and complexity unique even for the English literature. Until now, only very brief results or some partial findings were published. Newly will be described key areas of the quality life of the patients, findings from interviews, the results will be presented in the broad range etc. This chapter is particularly focused on the quality of life in TD patients, role of stress, how they cope with it, including protective factors (resilience and social support). The introduction will summarize the newest research which will be compared to earlier publications, considerably updated. Further will be described the performed research – the samples, methods, results, discussion and conclusions.