Behav Med
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The authors of the present study investigated the relationship between rheumatoid arthritis (RA) patients' demographic, medical, and functional status and caregivers' burden, optimism, and pessimism. Subjects were 65 RA patients and their caregivers who were recruited from an outpatient rheumatology clinic. Each caregiver completed the Burden Interview to measure caregiver burden and the Life Orientation Test to measure optimism and pessimism. ⋯ Correlational analyses indicated that patients' functional and psychological measures (including poor self-efficacy expectations regarding symptoms) were related to caregiver burden, that patient self-efficacy expectations were related to caregiver optimism, and that patient physical disability was related to caregiver pessimism. Regression analyses revealed that, when competing with other demographic and disease severity variables, the relationships between patient self-efficacy expectations and caregiver burden and caregiver optimism, and patient physical function and caregiver pessimism remained significant. Taken together, these findings suggest that patient expectancies about control over arthritis-related symptoms (including pain) are strongly related to caregiver burden and caregiver optimism and that patient physical status is strongly related to caregiver pessimism.
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Chronic back pain is a major consumer of costly healthcare resources in the Western world. Patients' suffering affects their families and associates, leads to diminished self-confidence, and prevents their effective participation in the workplace. Although medical treatments and analgesics are generally successful in treating acute back pain, and some patients recover spontaneously, conventional approaches are less successful in dealing with chronic pain and may be contraindicated. ⋯ Part 2 provides a step-by-step description of how to incorporate basic psychological techniques and physical therapy procedures for chronic pain sufferers. Patient and therapist cooperate in operant activities, with the patient monitoring progress and carrying out regular home-work assignments as he or she seeks to perform target activities; applied relaxation encourages the patient to cope with pain by disrupting the connection between anxiety, despair, and pain. The techniques outlined are suitable for dealing with other musculoskeletal conditions as well as with chronic back pain.
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Research on psychiatric disorders in obesity has indicated that obese people are not psychiatrically different from nonobese people. Few studies, however, have addressed the potential impact of psychopathology on weight control. ⋯ After 12 weeks of a liquid protein formula diet, patients with no personality disorder lost significantly more weight than personality disordered patients; personality disordered patients on a behavioral diet tended (p < .15) to lose more weight during a 12-week diet than the patients without personality disorders. These data suggest that there are differential responses to liquid protein and behavioral diets, depending on the presence or absence of a personality disorder.