The Effects of Psycho-Education on the Health-Related Quality of life on Mastalgia Patients

Mastalgia has been accepted as an issue which highly affects the daily life. Our primary purpose in this study is to research the effects of the pain in a group of women with mastalgia not depending on the organic etiology of the quality of life. The second purpose of ours is to depict whether psycho-education has an effect on the pain and the quality of life in these patients. In order to research the effect of Mastalgia on the quality of life, the data of the whole study group have been compared with the Turkey standard data of SF-36 scale. A randomized pre–post intervention study was conducted in Adana Numune Hospital General Surgical Department. The study consists of 98 mastalgia patients who do not have any organic etiology. Psycho-education was given to randomly allocated 66 patients (Psycho-Education Group: PEG) and not given to the other 32 patients (Non-Psycho-Education Group: Non-PEG). The Visual Analog Skala (VAS) and the quality of life scale (SF-36) were applied to all patients. All invantories were re-applied 2 months later. When compared SF-36 subscale data of the whole patient group with the norm results of SF-36 determined for Turkey, the difference in the quality of life of all subscales except for physical function subscale was found statistically significant. While no difference was found between the PEG and Non-PEG for the whole subscales before psycho-education, the difference in the whole subscales after psycho-education was found statistically significant. After psycho-education the difference in the VAS scores between PEG and Non-PEG was found statistically significant. Our study has shown that mastalgia has a negative effect on the quality of life. This study has also revealed that psycho-education must be considered as an effective alternative to reducing pain and increasing the quality of life on mastalgia patients.