Physicians’ difficulty with emergency department patients is related to patients’ attachment style

Relationships with clinical staff after a diagnosis of breast cancer are associated with patients' experience of care and abuse in childhood

“…When faced with danger, Bowlby [46] argued that individuals seek relationships with an authority whom they charge with the power to protect them. In the belief that illness provokes intense emotional needs in patients that resemble the attachment needs of intimate relationships, the theory has been applied to understanding the emotional dependence on clinicians of patients with cancer or other illnesses [2,3,44,45,[47][48][49][50][51] and the difficulty that some patients present to emergency department doctors [52]. According to this theory, individuals' ability to form trusting relationships depends on their mental models of themselves and potential carers, which are shaped by childhood experiences.…”

Adult attachment measures: A 25-year review

“…Despite good evidence to support the theoretically derived links between the quality of patient-provider relationship, health care utilization, and other medical outcomes [9,11,12,14,15,[28][29][30][31][32], it may be off-putting for patients with serious medical conditions to report on attitudes towards romantic relation- ships, which, on the face of it, seem to have little relevance to their most pressing concerns. Thus, the apparent relevance of questions or items in an attachment measurement to the situations of the persons who are being evaluated will be a consideration in choosing an attachment measure.…”

What Makes for Good Sex? The Associations Among Attachment Style, Inhibited Communication and Sexual Satisfaction

“…Davis et al (2006) have investigated attachment-related pathways to inhibition of sexual communication, and have found this variable to be a prime predictor of sexual dissatisfaction. Individuals with insecure attachments have dysfunctional communication patterns that began in childhood and persisted into their adult relationships (e.g., Davis et al, 2006;Maunder et al, 2006;Schachner, Shaver, & Mikulincer, 2005;Timm & Keiley, 2011), which has been shown to have a vital impact on sexual quality and satisfaction (Byers, 2011;Davis et al, 2006;MacNeil & Byers, 1997, 2009Timm & Keiley, 2011).…”