Depression is common in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) populations and has been hypothesized to result from patients' belief that they cannot control their disease or its impact. In a sample of 106 patients with RA, we found that scores on a measure of helplessness mediated the relationship between severe, disabling RA and depression. Further, this association was independent of the previously demonstrated correlation between cognitive distortion and depression in RA patients. Thus, both helplessness and cognitive distortion may be important factors in the development and treatment of depression among RA patients.
Ostomy patients have been identified as a chronic illness population frequently experiencing adjustment difficulties. The present study, based on the biopsychosocial model (Engel, 1977) of chronic illness, examined a range of post-surgical adjustment difficulties in a sample of 131 ostomy patients. The patient population reported experiencing a significant number of technical, emotional, social, marital/family, and sexual difficulties post-surgically. Technical difficulties were associated with impaired emotional, social, and marital/family functioning. Emotional difficulties were also associated with problematic social, marital/family adjustment, and impaired sexual functioning. Technical problems, emotional difficulties, and social problems were all associated with the patient's perception of having received inadequate preparatory information. Marital/family and sexual maladjustment, on the other hand, were associated with low levels of perceived social support. The results of this investigation are interpreted as supporting the biopsychosocial model of chronic illness, and the clinical implications of these findings are discussed as well as their relation to previous research on adjustment to stressful medical procedures.
In research on couples, statistical adjustment (i.e., partialing) for correlations between partners’ parallel scores is common and useful, as in the actor–partner interdependence model. Original and partialed scores are typically interpreted as assessing the same construct, but this may not be a valid assumption. Other approaches to nonindependence—such as common fate modeling—may better represent some couple constructs. This study of 300 couples utilized participants’ interpersonal circumplex ratings of partners’ typical behavior during marital interactions to evaluate the interpersonal meaning of unadjusted and partialed forms of the Marital Adjustment Test (MAT), a measure of overall relationship quality, and the Quality of Relationships Inventory-Support (QRI-S) and Conflict (QRI-C) scales, which measured perceived support from and conflict with the partner. After partialing partners’ scores, MAT and QRI-S scores were substantially less closely associated with ratings of partners’ warmth, their primary expected interpersonal correlates. Partner-partialed QRI-C scores were substantially less closely correlated with ratings of partners’ hostility and were associated with a somewhat more controlling form of hostility. In contrast, partialing partners’ trait optimism scores resulted in minimal changes in interpersonal correlates of this personality characteristic. Couple-level MAT, QRI-S, and QRI-C variables representing overlapping variance across partners while partialing unshared variance in spouses’ scores (i.e., common fate scores) had highly similar interpersonal correlates when compared to unadjusted versions. Potential alterations in construct validity resulting from partialing partners’ scores warrant interpretive caution, and alternative analytic frameworks (e.g., the common fate model) may better maintain the construct validity of some dyadic measures.
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