Psychosomatic medicine
-
Psychosomatic medicine · May 2004
Comparative StudyDepression and abdominal pain in IBS patients: the mediating role of catastrophizing.
Depression has been linked to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but the mechanism underlying this relationship is unknown. This cross-sectional study explores the possibility that negatively skewed beliefs patients hold regarding abdominal pain (ie, catastrophizing) mediate the relationship between depression and pain severity. ⋯ The relation between depression and pain is not, as psychogenic models predict, strictly a direct and linear one but works partly through patients' beliefs regarding their pain in general and pain catastrophizing in specific. Implications of the findings for understanding and investigating the depression-IBS link from a biopsychosocial perspective are discussed.