‘Stress helps me learn and grow’: Does stress mindset matter for children and young adults with chronic pain?

Stress Mindset and Social Identification in Chronic Pain Patients and Their Relationship to Coping, Well-Being & Depression

“…Our findings are widely consistent with the literature. We confirm results in a sample of children with chronic pain by Heathcote et al ( 2018 ) for adults with chronic pain, adding upon their results by revealing the negative consequences of a negative stress mindset in chronic pain patients for coping and well-being. We also incorporate social identification research into the field of chronic pain, which is a rarely taken approach, although the former shows its important effects on physical and mental health (e.g., Steffens et al, 2017 ), which is especially important for people suffering from chronic pain.…”

“…We assume that there is a given comparability of assessment methods across the two study groups, as all of those concepts concern all human beings to some extent and, for example the Stress Mindset Measure and the Brief COPE have already been validated in chronic pain or other clinical samples (Amoyal et al, 2016 ; Heathcote et al, 2018 ).…”

“…an SID mindset. Indeed, initial evidence supports this proposition: Heathcote et al ( 2018 ) show that children with chronic pain are more likely to have an SID mindset than an SIE mindset compared to children without chronic pain. Within those children with chronic pain, those who had an SID mindset showed significantly more pain-related distress, such as fear of pain and pain catastrophizing and more functional constraints, such as activity limitations.…”

“…A stress mindset refers to an individual’s belief about whether stress is perceived to benefit performance, productivity, health and growth (referred to as the stress-is-enhancing mindset) or whether it is more likely to negatively impact these variables (referred to as the stress-is-debilitating mindset; Crum et al, 2013 ). Initial research into children with chronic pain suggests that chronic pain patients more often have a stress-is-debilitating mindset (Heathcote et al, 2018 ), which, in turn, may negatively affect their coping behaviors, such as active coping and positive reframing, as previous stress mindset research suggests (Crum et al, 2013 , 2017 ). Positive reframing means trying to look at a situation from a more positive perspective or finding something good in what happened to you, while active coping means focusing on trying and/or taking action to change something about the stressful situation you are in (Knoll et al, 2005 ).…”