Self‐Critical Perfectionism Predicts Outcome in Multidisciplinary Treatment for Chronic Pain

Abstract

Results suggest that self-critical perfectionistic personality features may negatively interfere with treatment response in patients with chronic pain. Thus, findings indicate that chronic pain patients with high levels of self-critical perfectionism may benefit less from brief interventions such as MPEP, and therefore may need more intensive and tailored treatment.

Perfectionism and Maladaptive Coping Styles in Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Irritable Bowel Syndrome and Fibromyalgia/Arthritis and in Healthy Controls

“…That maladaptive perfectionism was associated with disengagement coping in the CFS group highlights the role of perfectionism in interfering with the completion of important illness management tasks and goals that may be viewed as too stressful. That maladaptive perfectionism was also associated with maladaptive coping in IBS and FM/arthritis is consistent with research indicating that maladaptive perfectionism is a vulnerability factor for other chronic pain conditions [9]. …”

Depressive personality vulnerability in chronic physical pain: Centrality of sociotropy

“…Possibly, in the context of chronic and debilitating pain, (anxious) depression is no longer susceptible to the effects of self‐criticism, actually increasing the latter instead. This possibility, however, is tempered by previous research showing prospective effects of self‐criticism on depression in chronic pain (via interacting with the affective component of pain; Lerman et al, ), on the outcome of multidisciplinary pain treatment (Kempke et al, ), and on symptoms of chronic fatigue (Luyten et al, ). Shedding light on this inconsistency remains a challenge for future research.…”

“…Self‐criticism also prospectively predicted physicians' pessimism regarding pain patients' prognoses (Rudich, Lerman, Gurevitch, Weksler, & Shahar, ). Likewise, pretreatment self‐criticism predicted a poor outcome in multidisciplinary treatment of chronic pain (Kempke et al, ; Kempke, Luyten, Van Wambeke, Coppens, & Morlion, ). Taken together, these findings suggest that self‐criticism might serve as a unique depressive trait that complicates the course of chronic pain over and above depressive symptoms.…”

New Frontiers in the Treatment of Perfectionism

“…For example, in a study of 239 patients with depression, perfectionism significantly predicted negative outcome, for both psychological and pharmacological treatments (Blatt, Quinlan, Pilkonis & Shea, 1995). Pre-treatment self-critical perfectionism was significantly associated with negative treatment outcome in 53 patients with chronic pain, even after taking into account pre-treatment levels of depression (Kempke, Luyten, Van Wambeke, Coppens & Morlion, 2014). In anorexia nervosa, perfectionism is associated with poorer outcome after hospital admission (Bizuel, Sadowsky & Riguad, 2001) and with treatment drop-out (Sutandar-Pinnock, Carter, Olmsted & Kaplan, 2003).…”