Social science & medicine
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1984
The spouse's adjustment to chronic pain: cognitive and emotional factors.
Recent research has demonstrated that the pain behaviors displayed by patients who have chronic pain complaints can be rewarded and maintained by the solicitous and attentive responses of spouses. The present study examines cognitive and emotional factors which may underly such solicitous responding by the spouses. In this study spouses completed a questionnaire (The Spouses' Perception of Disease--SPOD) which was designed to determine their perceptions of the patients' chronic pain syndromes. ⋯ The results of this study show that spouse's cognitive interpretation of the patient's chronic pain syndrome is closely associated with the spouse's emotional adjustment and marital satisfaction. Optimism, perception that the patient has a positive attitude along with few psychological problems and the perception that the patient is severely disabled all are associated with more positive emotional status in spouses. The results are discussed in terms of their implications for the rehabilitation of chronic pain patients.
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1984
Comparative StudyGender differences in mental and physical illness: the effects of fixed roles and nurturant roles.
A decade ago it was widely assumed that there were no gender differences in mental illness/mental health and that any evidence that suggested that women experienced more psychological distress than men was due to women being more willing to admit to psychological distress, being more willing to seek treatment and/or sex bias on the part of clinicians. Furthermore, although it was widely recognized that on most indicators of physical illness women appeared to have higher rates of morbidity, it was generally assumed that the apparent higher rates of women did not reflect real differences in morbidity, but gender differences in illness behavior. A survey of the recent literature, however, shows that there is now a general consensus among social scientists that women experience more psychological distress than men and that this is largely due to aspects of their societal roles. ⋯ It is argued that highly structured or 'fixed' roles tend to be causally related to good mental health and low rates of morbidity. In contrast nurturant roles tend to impose a strain and to impair one's ability to effectively adopt a sick role and as a consequence nurturant roles are linked to poor mental health and the higher rates of morbidity. In short, it is suggested that the fixed role-hypothesis and the nurturant role hypothesis complement each other and together partially explain the higher rates of physical illness and psychological distress among women.
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1984
Patient evaluation of a cognitive behavioral group program for patients with chronic low back pain.
Traditional approaches to curing patients with chronic benign pain have had only limited success. Rehabilitation becomes therefore more important and in recent years management programs have been developed to achieve this goal. This study was based on the hypothesis that a program can be more effective with its structure according to the comments of patients with respect to the various components of the program. After testing this hypothesis we conclude that such subjective evaluation of treatment is an important factor which merits receiving more attention than previous work has suggested.
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1984
Distribution of behavioral science faculty in United States medical schools: 1968-1969 and 1978-1979.
The Association of American Medical Colleges' faculty profiles were analyzed for 117 U. S. medical schools for the years 1968/1969 and 1978/1979. ⋯ Although still small in numbers, faculty from other disciplines such as anthropology and sociology have gained increasing acceptance, and these 117 medical schools now employ at least 20 full-time economists and 13 who have earned degrees in political science. The growth of behavioral science faculty has been primarily in clinical departments, and those who are associated with independent departments of behavioral science remained virtually static (87 vs 88) over this 10 year period.
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Social science & medicine · Jan 1984
Dramaturgy of occult practitioners in the treatment of disease and dysfunction entities.
This paper provides a dramaturgical analysis of the beliefs and practices of rural and suburban fortune-tellers in the treatment of disease and dysfunction entities. Based upon in-depth interviews with 21 non-Gypsy fortune-tellers, the client records of a key informant and the second author's first-hand familiarity with select aspects of fortune-telling, the paper examines the role of the fortune-teller as a quasi-practitioner. ⋯ Occult treatment for the conditions tends to mimic the dramaturgy of conventional practitioners through the use of occult rhetoric, labels, client typifications, props and treatment scripts. The management of venereal disease and sexual impotence is examined in detail to illustrate the occult approach to disease and dysfunction entities.