Social science & medicine
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Social science & medicine · Jan 2012
Emotion awareness and coping in children with functional abdominal pain: a controlled study.
Literature on somatization suggests that patients suffering from medically unexplained symptoms are less aware of their emotions and use maladaptive coping strategies when coping with everyday problems. In addition, coping is hypothesized to mediate between emotion awareness and medically unexplained symptoms. Scientific evidence for the relevance of this hypothesis for children with functional abdominal pain (FAP) is, however, lacking. ⋯ Problem focused coping had a small mediating effect for two aspects of emotion awareness. We conclude that children with FAP show only small differences in emotion awareness and coping compared to children without AP, and are practically no different from children with some AP. Contrary to common belief, it can be questioned whether emotion awareness and general coping are useful targets for psychological treatments of FAP to focus on.
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Social science & medicine · Jan 2012
Beyond symptoms: defining primary care mental health clinical assessment priorities, content and process.
The assessment of undifferentiated psychological distress is a daily aspect of primary care practice. Primary care practitioners' underlying values influence the priorities, process and content of assessment. ⋯ Furthermore, it raises awareness of current constraints on practice, including an overreliance on the psychiatric paradigm of care and resulting criteria-based diagnoses. Finally, the paper seeks to promote discussion among primary care practitioners and researchers globally about how to define primary care clinical mental health assessment priorities, process and content.