Cognitive-constructivist Approach in Medical Settings: The Use of Personal Meaning Questionnaire for Neurological Patients’ Personality Investigation

Abstract

Objective: The cognitive-constructivist psychotherapy approach considers the self as a continuous regulation process between present and past experience, in which attributions of meaning is characterized by the use of internal rules. In this conception, everyone would be driven by a specific inner coherence called Personal Meaning Organization (PMO). Such approach has never been applied to neurological patients by means of ad hoc developed tools. We performed an explorative study aimed to characterize personality styles in different neurological conditions within the theoretical framework of cognitive-constructivist model.Materials and Methods: Three groups of neurological patients (Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis, Multiple Sclerosis, Primary Headache) and a sample of healthy participants, each composed by 15 participants, for a total of 60 participants, were recruited. The Personal Meaning Questionnaire (PMQ), an Italian questionnaire assessing PMOs construct, and other clinical tools for psychological and quality of life assessment were administered to all subjects.Results: The main finding concerned the detection, across all clinical conditions, of a higher prevalence of phobic personality style, with Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis showing a relevant prevalence of such PMO with respect to all other neurological conditions and controls. However, with respect to controls, in all clinical conditions, PMQ highlighted a tendency, even if not statistically significant, to codify experience by means of specific cognitive and emotional patterns.Conclusion: Our findings represent the first contribution towards understanding the personality profiles of patients affected by neurological conditions according to cognitive-constructivist theory.

A Novel Approach for Investigating Parkinson’s Disease Personality and Its Association With Clinical and Psychological Aspects

“…The latter finding, in the cognitive-constructivist model, suggests the presence of alexitimic traits typical of phobic organization, consisting of a difficulty to identify emotional experiences and to relate emotional states to somatic perturbations. Such results are in accordance with Guidano’s considerations (Guidano, 1987) about distribution of PMO in the general population and with previous studies employing PMQ in other neurological conditions (Poletti et al, 2017; Possa et al, 2017). Moreover, these data are also in accordance with previous studies, highlighting an association between premorbid anxious personality and risk of developing PD (Bower et al, 2010).…”

“…Moreover, the absence of a nosographic diagnosis concerning psychopatological and personality dimensions, not having included other more traditional personality assessment tools and the adoption of a cross-sectional study may limit the explanatory power of our results from a clinical point of view. Finally, the detection of higher phobic PMO across different neurological conditions (Poletti et al, 2017; Possa et al, 2017) could possibly underlie some methodological bias that should be addressed in order to improve PMQ validity and sensitivity.…”

“…In the present study, we adopted the validated Italian version of each questionnaire. The described psychological and personality questionnaires have been adopted in a previous study aimed to evaluate personality features in other neurological populations (Poletti et al, 2017).…”

“…The development by Picardi and colleagues (Picardi and Mannino, 2001; Picardi et al, 2003, 2004) of the Personal Meaning Questionnaire (PMQ), aimed at assessing the construct of PMO, provided new methods of personality investigation within the cognitive-constructivist paradigm. This instruments has been preliminarily used for the evaluation of personality characteristics of neurological populations (Poletti et al, 2017). Due to the categorical approach entailed in the PMQ, it seems useful to detect the presence of a specific and prevalent personality style and could improve the characterization of a parkinsonian personality.…”

Cognitive Constructivism in the Development of Medical Education

“…Research in this area has mainly concentrated on cognitive theories as they relate to cognitive therapy or psychological treatment. The emphasis in medical education has been more on cognitive theories and developmental research, with less attention given to cognitive constructivism [11,[20][21][22].…”