Pain and illness behaviour: a comparative study.
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Age Factors↗
Biomedical subjects
N D Spence
Publications and source records attributed to N D Spence.
Illness behaviour syndromes associated with intractable pain.
One hundred patients, referred for the management of intractable pain, completed a 52-item Illness Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ). Responses were scored on 7 scales: general hypochondriasis, disease conviction, psychological versus somatic perception of illness, affective inhibition, affective disturbance, denial, and irritability. IBQ scale profiles were subjected to numerical analysis and 6 taxonomic clusters were identified. Patients in groups 1-3 were characterized by a relatively non-neurotic, reality-oriented attitude to illness, as indicated by low scores on the first three scales. Patients in groups 4-6 manifested greater evidence of 'abnormal illness behaviour', and presented syndromes resembling 'hysteria', 'conversion reaction', and 'hypothchondriasis' respectively.
Adult↗
Is illness behavior related to chronicity in patients with intractable pain?
One hundred patients, referred for the management of intractable pain, completed a 52-item Illness Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ). Responses were scored on 7 scales: general hypochondriasis, disease conviction, psychological versus somatic perception of illness, affective inhibition, affective disturbance, denial and irritability. IBQ scale profiles were used to study the relationship between chronicity of pain and pattern of illness behaviour reported. Except in the case of one scale, no significant correlation emerged. This overall lack of association between chronicity and illness behaviour remained even when the patient sample was restricted to those 20 patients having substantial organic pathology associated with their pain. These findings suggest that degree of chronicity is unlikely to play a major role in determining the illness behaviour manifested by patients with intractable pain.
Chronic Disease↗
Hostility and depressive illness.
This study employs a method of classification based on "information measure" taxonomy to investigate an aspect of hostility in nonendogenously depressed, endogenously depressed and nondepressed patients. Results show that there are no statistically significant differences between the three groups as such, but that a patient's self-rating of anger is substantially related to his position on the endogenous-nonendogenous depression dimension. The greater the anger score, the more likely the patient is to present a depressive syndrome of a nonendogenous type. These observations provide support for previous findings in this area and prompt certain tentative theoretical speculations.
Adjustment Disorders↗
Patterns of illness behaviour in patients with intractable pain.
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Affective Symptoms↗
The attribution of affect in pain clinic patients: a psychophysiological study of the conversion process.
In a study to examine the relationship between the conversion process and physiological correlates of emotional arousal, three key elements of conversion were assessed separately in patients experiencing chronic pain for which no adequate somatic cause could be demonstrated. Thirty-seven patients referred to a pain clinic were categorized as members of either high, intermediate, or low conversion groups on the basis of their scores on the Disease Conviction, Affective Disturbance and Denial scales of the Illness Behaviour Questionnaire (IBQ). All patients scored in the high range on Disease Conviction. High conversion patients acknowledge little dysphoric affect and denied life problems apart from physical illness. Intermediate conversion patients also denied life problems other than somatic, but acknowledged high levels of dysphoria. Low conversion patients reported dysphoria and acknowledged life problems which they did not attribute to physical illness. The prediction that the high conversion group would show lower levels of resting skin conductance than the low conversion group was confirmed. Patients in the intermediate conversion group resembled those in the high conversion group in that their resting skin conductance was significantly lower than that observed in members of the low conversion group. These findings are consistent with those of previous studies of conversion disorders. They point to the importance in these conditions of the interaction between dysphoria and the cause to which it is attributed by the patient.
Adult↗