Chronic illness diagnoses frequently cause the shattering of personal assumptions about the self and the world, resulting in an experience of alienation and fragmentation of identity. Multiple studies on the effects of expressive writing have demonstrated physical, emotional, and psychological health benefits, yet little is known about how it…

Many actions of troubled children and adolescents can disguise and conceal their ever-present and deep-seated psycho-emotional pain. Adults living and working with these youth may overlook this pain in a strategy of avoidance. Labelling troubling behavior as "outbursts," "explosions," or "acting out," ignores the…

Sport participation can be a stressful experience for some high school athletes. Sustaining a sport injury can further increase athletes' stress levels. Coaches may feel uncomfortable interacting with injured athletes and can unconsciously or purposefully marginalize them. However, coaches have a responsibility toward all of their athletes,…

This phenomenological, qualitative research study involved in-depth interviews with 22 participants enrolled in a private Midwestern university. Each participant reported living with a respective chronic pain syndrome while also being a full-time student. Our semi-structured, interviews centered around the constructs of physical, social,…

The degree to which experiential avoidance may represent a functional response class was examined by comparing the perseverance of participants displaying high versus low levels of experiential avoidance, as assessed by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (Hayes et al., 2004), during a "psychological biathlon" consisting of 2 challenging tasks…

Objective: A growing number of researchers have examined the use of over-the-counter (OTC) medications and herbal or dietary supplements among college students. There is concern about the efficacy and safety of these products, particularly because students appear to use them at a higher rate than does the general public. Participants and Methods:…

A concurrent mixed methods approach was used to understand how learned resourcefulness empowers individuals. After completing Rosenbaum's Self-Control Schedule (SCS) measuring resourcefulness, 16 past clients of a multimodal pain clinic were interviewed about the kinds of pain-coping strategies they were practicing from the program. Constant…

Sixty-four headache sufferers were allocated randomly to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), temporal pulse amplitude (TPA) biofeedback training, or waiting-list control. Fifty-one participants (14M/37F) completed the study, 30 with migraine and 21 with tension-type headache. Treatment consisted of 8, 1-hour sessions. CBT was highly effective,…

Discusses coping and personal adjustment to chronic pain for adolescents with sickle cell anemia and presents a model of illness behavior for these adolescents. Offers a framework of disease severity and disease impact, and suggests using functional ability as an index of coping and personal adjustment. Contains 59 references. (SLD)

Because the onset of a spinal cord injury may involve a brush with death and because serious injury and disability can act as a reminder of death, death anxiety was examined as a predictor of posttraumatic stress levels among individuals with disabilities. This cross-sectional study used multiple regression and multivariate multiple regression to…

This study tested a theoretical model concerning religious, passive, and active coping; pain; and psychological adjustment among a sample of 200 Latinos with arthritis. Respondents reported using high levels of religious coping. A path analysis indicated that religious coping was correlated with active but not with passive coping. Religious coping…

Reports of adolescents' coping with recurrent pain, symptoms of anxiety/depression, and somatic complaints were obtained from a sample of 164 adolescents with recurrent abdominal pain and their parents. Confirmatory factor analysis revealed that coping consisted of 3 nonorthogonal factors: Primary Control Engagement Coping (problem solving,…

Studied the impact of support groups on the psychological well-being of adolescents with sickle cell disease (SCD). Response of 79 adolescent SCD group members show that psychological well-being was best predicted by fewer physical symptoms and greater satisfaction with the group. Findings suggest the beneficial effects of SCD support groups. (SLD)

Participants displaying high versus low levels of experiential avoidance as assessed by the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire (Hayes, Strosahl, et al., 2004) were compared in their reactions to and efforts to cope with pain induced by the cold pressor task. As expected, high avoidant participants were less tolerant of pain and more likely to…

This study examined the impact of the 1998 Canadian ice storm on the physical and psychological health of older adults (age greater than 55 years) living with a chronic physical illness, namely osteoarthritis and/or osteoporosis. Although disasters are relatively rare, they are a useful means of examining the impact of a single stressor on a group…