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Belief in a just world, health-related quality of life, and mental health among Chinese patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

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Abstract

Purpose

Personal belief in a just world (PBJW) has been demonstrated to protect mental health. However, whether general belief in a just world (GBJW) serves adaptive functions for mental health across different groups and cultures remains unclear. This study explored the effects of PBJW and GBJW on mental health and moderating effects of PBJW and GBJW on the relation between health-related quality of life and mental health among patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in China.

Methods

A total of 147 patients with COPD (90.5% male; mean age = 64.44 years) completed measures of health-related quality of life, depression, anxiety, PBJW, and GBJW and provided pulmonary function data.

Results

Younger age and female sex were related to higher depression; female sex, living with others, and high financial burden were associated with higher anxiety. Worse health-related quality of life and lower PBJW were associated with higher depression and anxiety. An interaction between health-related quality of life and BJW was revealed. For patients with low PBJW, lower health-related quality of life was correlated with higher depression. For patients with stronger endorsement of GBJW, worse health-related quality of life was associated with higher depression and anxiety, but the variance of anxiety caused by interaction was insignificant.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that for patients with COPD experiencing health deterioration, holding strong PBJW but weak GBJW may be beneficial for mental health. Our study advances our understanding of the different functions of PBJW and GBJW in mental health across different groups and cultures.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the staff at the Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine in Nanfang Hospital for help with recruitment. We would also like to thank the support of Qiuhua Zhang for original design and Ye Xue from Beijing Normal University for statistical analysis.

Funding

This study was funded by MOE (Ministry of education in China) Project of Humanities and Social Sciences (Grant Number 17YJCZH014); Foundation of “13th Five-Year Plan” for Guangzhou Philosophy and Social Sciences Development (Grant Number 2018GZYB70).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Cognitive Neuroscience and Learning, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China

    Kewen Jian

  2. Department of Psychology, School of Public Health (Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Tropical Disease Research), Southern Medical University, Baiyun District, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China

    Kewen Jian, Shunliang Sun & Xihua Zeng

  3. Department of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China

    Hangming Dong

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  1. Kewen Jian
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  2. Shunliang Sun
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  4. Xihua Zeng
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Contributions

Conceptualization: XZ, HD, KJ; Methodology: XZ, SS, KJ; Formal analysis and investigation: KJ; Writing—original draft preparation: KJ; Writing—review and editing: KJ, XZ, SS; Funding acquisition: XZ; Resources: HD, XZ; Supervision: XZ, HD. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Hangming Dong or Xihua Zeng.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards. The study was approved by the Medical Ethics Committee of Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Jian, K., Sun, S., Dong, H. et al. Belief in a just world, health-related quality of life, and mental health among Chinese patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Qual Life Res 30, 157–167 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11136-020-02619-x

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