The measurement of abnormal illness behavior: Toward a new research agenda for the Illness Behavior Questionnaire

Alexithymia in fibromyalgia syndrome: Associations with ongoing pain, experimental pain sensitivity and illness behavior

“…This new finding is consistent with previous studies, which have shown that illness behavior is associated both with alexithymia [50,51] and with exacerbated chronic pain [32,33]. Longitudinal studies suggest that the relationship between illness behavior and chronic pain is likely bidirectional [53,54].…”

“…Psychological distress (anxiety, depression) was assessed to control for its effects. As chronic pain and maladaptive illness behavior have been shown to be related and might be hypothesized to influence each other [32,33], we also assessed whether their relationships to alexithymia were mutually independent.…”

Patterns of Emotional Expression and Responses to Health and Illness in Women With Functional Voice Disorders (MTVD) and a Comparison Group

“…[32][33][34] MTVD2 participants reported a greater use of adaptive coping than both MTVD1 participants and their own comparison sample, and also more maladaptive coping strategies than all other samples. Although these results do serve to distinguish MTVD1 and MTVD2 participants, they also seem somewhat contradictory at face value because adaptive coping involves more active strategies such as acceptance, seeking emotional or instrumental social support, and humor, whereas maladaptive coping includes the more passive tendencies of venting, disengagement, denial, selfblame, and substance use.…”

“…Measures of AIB provide exemplars of cognitive and affective evaluations, whereas recent data suggest that coping styles may be used to evaluate overt behavioral reactions to illness interpretations. [32][33][34] Coping has also been acknowledged as an important component of the evaluation of the impact of voice disorders. 35 In summary, the aforementioned theories of FVDs provide evidence of the potential relevance of psychosocial constructs, such as emotional expression, alexithymia, illness behavior, and coping strategies.…”

Predicting wellbeing among people with epilepsy using illness cognitions

“…Illness behavior refers to cognitive and affective responses to somatic symptoms that affect the course of an illness and its treatment, which help clarify why some individuals react in extreme ways compared with others, despite similar symptomology. That is, while some people are inclined to deny illness, others become distressed by even minor bodily changes [15][16][17]. The psychiatric conception of abnormal illness behavior (AIB), pioneered by Pilowsky [18], quantifies constructs such as 'hypochondriasis', 'denial', 'psychological vs. somatic' (attribution of illness), 'irritability', 'disease conviction', and 'affective disturbance'.…”