Social learning influences on menstrual symptoms and illness behavior.

Abstract

The contribution of learning to the adult experience of illness was investigated by asking 351 nursing students how their mothers reacted to menstrual symptoms and cold symptoms during their adolescence and how their mothers behaved when they themselves had menstrual symptoms. Mothers of respondents were independently asked the same questions. Nursing students who had been encouraged to adopt a sick role for menses or whose mothers modeled menstrual distress reported significantly more menstrual symptoms, clinic visits, and disability days for these symptoms as adults. Similarly, those encouraged to adopt a sick role for colds or who lived with a chronically ill person reported more clinic visits and disability days for nongynecological symptoms. Specific types of symptom reports and health care appeared to be learned: Encouragement and modeling of the menstrual sick role were more highly correlated with symptom-reports, clinic visits, and absenteeism for menstrual than for nongynecological symptoms, and encouragement of the cold sick role was more highly correlated with nongynecological than with menstrual clinic visits and absenteeism.

The treatment of recurrent abdominal pain in children: A controlled comparison of cognitive-behavioral family intervention and standard pediatric care.

“…According to operant and cognitive-behavioral models of chronic pain (e.g., Fordyce, 1976;Kerns et al, 1991;Turk et al, 1987), caregivers (including parents) provide discriminative cues and selective reinforcement for behavioral expressions of pain (e.g., complaints of pain, guarded movement). Parental attention contingent on pain, the avoidance of nonpreferred activities (Philips, 1987), and parental modeling influences (Whitehead, Busch, Heller, & Costa, 1986) may affect the child's pain. Specifically, some caregiving practices (e.g., sympathy and attention, expression of concerns, physical nurturance, external help seeking, or emotional reactions of anger or criticism) may reinforce pain behaviors (Fordyce, 1976;Payne & Norfleet, 1986).…”

A miliőtan története

“…Whitehead IBS-el kapcsolatos vizsgálatai, amiben telefonos felmérésre építve kimutatták, hogy az IBS-ben jellemző tüneteket a populáció kb. 20%-a jól ismeri, de csak 1% fordult ilyen tünetekkel valaha is orvoshoz Whitehead et al, 1986 . Szomatikus tüneteket egyébként a populáció 70-90 %-a mutat (pl.…”

Social learning contributions to the etiology and treatment of functional abdominal pain and inflammatory bowel disease in children and adults

“…Turkat [16] found evidence for the effect of modeling in diabetic patients, patients with chronic headaches [17] and in a small group of healthy subjects [18] . Several studies have interviewed adults about their experiences as children, and found higher reported rates of reinforcement and modeling for illness behavior during childhood among adults with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS, a condition characterized by abdominal pain or discomfort and altered bowel habits occurring in the absence of underlying disease pathology) compared to asymptomatic control groups [15,[19][20][21] .…”