This master's thesis examines the inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) in relation to the body image perception and the use of perfectionism as a strategy for confronting and coping with the disease. The theoretical part encompasses a comprehensive and in-depth overview of domestic and foreign specialised literature on the topic of IBD, body image and perfectionism, and is followed by an overview of the literature through the prism of relational family therapy.
The empirical part presents the results of the survey in which we have tested five predetermined hypotheses and investigated the link between the dimensions of IBD and perfectionism, and the dimensions of IBD and body image. The survey included 362 participants, of which 80 men and 282 women. 109 participants were diagnosed with IBD and 253 were not. Of the 109 participants diagnosed with IBD, 47 were diagnosed with ulcerative colitis (UC) and 52 with Crohn’s disease (CD).
The results show that there are two statistically significant differences between the two groups (people diagnosed with IBD and people without IBD diagnosis) in terms of body image perception and the use of perfectionism. The results also indicate that, in general, there is no statistically significant difference in body image perception between men and women diagnosed with IBD. The results also do not indicate any statistically significant difference in the use of perfectionism between respondents diagnosed with CD and those diagnosed with UC. It did turn out, however, that the anticipated difference between the two groups in the dimension of the MBSRQ that focuses on the emphasis of appearance does not exist as the answers of the respondents diagnosed with IBD were not much different to the answers of those not diagnosed with IBD.
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