The British journal of clinical psychology / the British Psychological Society
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Clinical Trial Controlled Clinical Trial
Communication variables in the design of pre-surgical preparatory information.
An experimental study of the design and implementation of a special preparatory booklet designed to reduce stress in surgical patients is reported. Patients in this study were 63 women undergoing minor gynaecological surgery. They were allocated sequentially to three groups: routine care only (control group), routine care plus a minimally informative booklet (placebo group) and routine care plus a maximally informative booklet (experimental group). ⋯ Finally, patients in the placebo group were found to have more misconceptions about surgery and to more often report anxiety in communication with staff and in association with reading materials. Partial correlation analyses showed that patients who have more knowledge about surgery have fewer worries and recover faster. The implications for cognitive theories of the process of stress reduction for surgical patients by psychological preparation are discussed.
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Comparative Study
A controlled study of the effects of applied relaxation and applied relaxation plus operant procedures in the regulation of chronic pain.
Chronic back/joint pain patients participated in a comparative study of relaxation and operant therapies for chronic pain. Patients were randomly assigned to: (1) a waiting-list control, or to either (2) an applied relaxation, or (3) an applied relaxation plus operant conditioning treatment programme. Waiting patients were subsequently randomly assigned to active treatment. ⋯ Within-group and single-subject analyses indicated that there were significant improvements between pre- and post-tests for the treatment groups, but not for the waiting-list control group. Follow-up data indicated maintenance, and that applied relaxation had significantly lower pain ratings than applied relaxation plus operant conditioning. Taken as a whole, the results show that applied relaxation can produce significant decreases in pain, and that the addition of an operant programme does not improve pain reductions, but does tend to improve results with activity and especially medicine intake variables.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Psychological preparation for surgery: a comparison of methods.
Sixty hysterectomy patients were randomly assigned to one of three types of psychological preparation prior to surgery, while an additional 10 patients declined psychological help. Twenty patients received information about the surgical procedure and its effects, another 20 were instructed in a cognitive coping technique, and the remainder were given general information about the ward. ⋯ Patients declining preparation responded badly immediately after surgery, but made a satisfactory recovery after discharge. Cognitive coping methods seem to be an effective way of managing specific worries about the operation, and it is suggested that this underlies differences in patterns of recovery following surgery.
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Previous research has shown that people who can voluntarily form vivid images are able to exert more control over some of their cognitive and affective functions than people who can voluntarily form only weak images. This study was designed to extend this line of research to the control of mood states. ⋯ It was found that greater changes occurred for the vivid imagers than for the weak imagers. These results were discussed in relation to the differential effectiveness of the mood induction procedures, the problem of measuring mood and the importance of taking into account individual differences in imagery abilities when planning imagery based treatment.