Chronic Illness-Related Shame: Development of a New Scale and Novel Approach for IBD Patients' Depressive Symptomatology

Abstract

The aims of the present study were to develop and validate a scale specifically focused on shame feelings derived from chronic illness-related experiences, the Chronic Illness-related Shame Scale (CISS) and to fill a gap in literature and analyse the role of this construct in the association between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) symptomatology and depressed mood. This study comprised two samples: a sample of 161 IBD patients and a mixed sample of 65 chronic patients that reported medical data and completed self-report measures. The CISS's unidimensional seven-item structure was evaluated through confirmatory factor analyses. These analyses revealed good to excellent global and local adjustments in both samples. Results also showed that the CISS presents excellent internal consistencies and convergent, concurrent and divergent validity, being a valid, short and robust scale. Furthermore, the present study explored through path analyses, the role of CISS and self-judgement in the relationship between IBD symptomatology and depressed mood. Results showed that, although the level of IBD symptomatology directly predicted patients' depressive symptoms, the majority of this effect was mediated by CISS and self-judgement. Possible explanations for these findings are discussed in more detail in the succeeding text. The present study seems to highlight the pertinence of developing IBD patients' self-compassionate abilities to adaptively deal with symptomatology and related shame feelings. It thus may represent an avenue for the development of compassionate-based interventions for IBD patients and for the conduction of future studies exploring the shame phenomenon in other chronic illnesses. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.