Journal of health psychology
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Hope has been correlated with greater pain tolerance and thresholds and less reported pain severity. The present study investigated the effectiveness of a brief hope-based intervention involving guided imagery and skills instruction aimed at enhancing pain coping skills among university students performing the cold pressor task. ⋯ Thus, this intervention facilitates better pain tolerance without necessarily changing the experience of the pain. Implications for practice and future research are discussed.
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The objective of this study was to investigate the test-retest stability of the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS), the Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia (TSK) and their subscales in chronic pain patients over relatively long period of times like those that are most often seen in clinical practice. Fifty non-malignant chronic pain patients filled out the PCS and TSK twice with a mean interval between testing of 52 days. Both assessment instruments showed sufficient test-retest stability, even with long time intervals between testing.
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Homelessness can be seen as a challenge for health psychology in research and practice on several levels: analysing the risks of becoming homeless; the living conditions of being homeless and their impact on health risks and problems; homeless youth as a specific phenomenon; health problems in the context of homelessness; service utilization and barriers and effects of interventions in the context of homelessness. With these levels, a framework is outlined for the contributions to this Special Issue. In the end, homelessness is discussed as an issue for prevention in three respects for a comprehensive approach in health psychology.
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Research suggests that depression and anxiety can affect quality of life in breast cancer survivors. Moreover, certain cognitive control beliefs have been implicated in the development and maintenance of both depression and anxiety. The present study examined the relationship between breast cancer locus of control beliefs and depression in early-stage breast cancer survivors. ⋯ Results showed that certain locus of control scores interact with anxiety to predict depression in early-stage breast cancer survivors. Findings further suggest that certain control beliefs previously considered adaptive in non-medically ill populations may be maladaptive in early-stage breast cancer survivors. Implications for further research are discussed.
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Fear-avoidance, an important model in the understanding of chronic pain, has not yet been studied in patients with burns. The purpose of this study was to investigate if recovered burn patients have fear-avoidance beliefs and to explore the association with psychological and somatic symptoms. ⋯ Beta coefficients from multiple regression analyses indicated a strong association between fear-avoidance and problems with work, heat sensitivity and arousal symptoms. The model was capable of explaining 73 per cent of the variance in fear-avoidance beliefs.