Cognitive behaviour therapy
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Controlled Clinical Trial
Assessing the relationship between cold pressor pain responses and dimensions of the anxiety sensitivity profile in healthy men and women.
Anxiety sensitivity (AS) has been shown previously to be an important factor in the perception and experience of experimentally induced pain within healthy adults. The aim of the current study was to extend this research by: (i) using the Anxiety Sensitivity Profile (ASP) as an alternative measure of AS; (ii) examining whether different coping instructions affect pain reports; and (iii) investigating potential differences between men and women. Participants were 50 healthy adults (23 males, 27 females) who were required to complete 2 versions of the cold pressor pain task; one version required the use of control instructions, whereas the other made use of acceptance-based instructions. ⋯ Of the ASP subscales, the gastrointestinal and cognitive concerns components were found to be the most strongly related to pain experiences. When the analysis was conducted separately for each sex, the ASP scales were related to the self-report measures of pain in women, whereas they were related to the behavioural measures of pain in men. These results not only confirm that AS is associated with experimental pain, but that there may be sex differences in this relationship.
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Anxiety sensitivity (AS) has been linked to a variety of disabling chronic health conditions, including pain-related conditions. A recent study has found that healthy women with high AS reported significantly higher levels of sensory and affective pain on an experimental cold pressor task compared to women with low AS. However, this study found no differences between AS groups for pain tolerance or pain threshold. ⋯ Also as expected, the high AS participants reported more pain in response to the cold pressor on the Present Pain Index (PPI) of the SF-MPQ than did the low AS participants. High AS participants did not differ from low AS participants on other aspects of the cold pressor response (e.g. pain threshold, pain tolerance, pain recovery). These results support the role of pain-related fear as a mediating variable between AS and increased perceived pain intensity.
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Post-traumatic stress disorder often co-occurs with depression, and they may share common risk factors. One possible common cognitive risk factor is hopelessness. Thus, we examined whether hopelessness was related to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. ⋯ Hierarchical, simultaneous regression analyses that co-varied trauma type revealed that hopelessness was related to self-reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, both concurrently and prospectively. Follow-up analyses revealed that relationships between hopelessness and symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder were due almost entirely to shared variance with depression. No relationships were found between hopelessness and interviewer-rated symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
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The aim of this study was to determine whether fear of pain and related fear constructs are elevated in people with co-occurring trauma-related stress and social anxiety symptoms relative to people with 1 or neither of these conditions. Eighty students were selected from a larger sample and divided into 4 equal groups comprising those with both high trauma-related stress and social anxiety symptom scores (TRS/SAS), only high trauma-related stress symptom scores (TRS), only high social anxiety symptom scores (SAS), or neither (N). ⋯ These findings suggest that people with co-occurring trauma-related and social anxiety symptoms are most likely to be fearful of pain and to thereby be at increased risk of developing chronic and disabling pain. Implications for future research and treatment are discussed.
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Contemporary cognitive models suggest that social anxiety disorder arises from a number of cognitive factors, including tendencies to form pessimistic (rather than optimistic) attributions and expectations for socially-related events. These models also assume that the strengths of such attributions and expectations are more closely linked with social anxiety than with general anxiety or depression. To test these assumptions, a battery of self-report measures was completed by participants with a primary diagnosis of generalized social anxiety disorder (n = 75), panic disorder with agoraphobia (n = 44), or post-traumatic stress disorder (n = 59). ⋯ Stable and global attributions for social negative events were more closely associated with social anxiety disorder than with panic disorder with agoraphobia and post-traumatic stress disorder. Correlational analyses also revealed specific relationships among social-cognitive measures and social anxiety, even after controlling for general anxiety and depression. The results are consistent with cognitive models of social anxiety disorder.