Allysha Campbell
Professor Kulics
General Psychology
01 December 2016
In today’s society among the elder population, the struggles involved with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) are a growing problem. It, generally, involves a physical distress on the joints of the body, causing anywhere from moderate to severe pain to the individual suffering from the disease. Countless research is being done to understand the causes of this disease and discover ways to prevent its rise. In fact, many physicians believe that the severity of joint pain a sufferer of RA feels is directly correlated to their psychological state or mood. This very concept was tested and can be observed by a case study performed in 1994 by Glenn Affleck, Howard Tennen, Susan Urrows,
They, additionally, suspected that disease activity would intensify the effects of stressors on pain but not on the mood of the individual.
For this case study, the candidates had to meet a set of specific criteria. The individuals involved were required to be 20 years of age minimum and experiencing joint pain for the past three months. In total, there were 74 participants in the experiment, 71% of them being female and 61% of them being of married status. The average age of the individuals that participated in the experiment was 52.7 years of age averaging approximately 12.8 years of education. Each participant had also been diagnosed with RA approximately 8.9 years prior to the case study taking place. The group was required before bedtime each night of the 75-day study to complete a checklist of the day's events and a rating scale for mood and pain severity. Each of these booklets and checklists were mailed out the following morning and each participant was paid $1 per completed booklet and $7 for each week of responses. By the end of the experiment, 99.5% of the reports required had been completed. The checklist used for the study was the Daily Life Experience Checklist. It contained 78 items under 5 major categories of activities which consisted of work
In reference to the time series data, the daily experience of the majority of the subjects had few days when undesirable events and stress were higher than under normal circumstances. In fact, there seemed to be a significant downward linear trend across the days of the experiment for a majority of the subjects. However, a small minority of the participants did describe an increase in stressful or undesirable events, negative mood, or pain. In relation to between person correlations, individuals that described their day as being high in undesirable events also reported higher levels of pain for that day as well as greater emotional disturbance. The subjects that reported more pain also reported a more negative mood. In addition, participants that had higher scores in the neuroticism category also had higher scores in negative mood and reported above normal amounts of daily stress. In reference to the final category of meta-analysis, the authors found that same day relations between undesirable events and pain were higher for those with more active inflammatory disease. The correlation between undesirable events and pain experienced by the subject the next day was higher for subjects that reported negative life events that happened before the study and also had higher more active forms of RA. The lagged
Many members of our society have sculpted their listeners into fooling their selves into believing that there are only two types of “happy”, happy or depressed. This leads to individuals suppressing their problems or believing they are suffering from a chronic illness when sadness is just a natural emotion that a person faces throughout their lifetime. Begley mimics “get over it: take a pill” (558). When living in a world where not being “happy” can provoke your friends and family to encourage drug use or choose to decline spending time with you until you are “happy again may cause many people to not even tell someone they are having problems which can result in the sadness to increase. It is soothing to know not all experts would say you are sick and need help just for an ordinary feeling. A lay reader that has no idea of what most psychologist feels about the evading happiness situation, may have thought all professionals insist on everyone being happy even when they have no desire
Tang, J and Gibson, S (2005). A psychophysical evaluation of the relationship between trait anxiety, pain perception, and induced state anxiety. The journal of pain: official journal of the American Pain Society 6 (9), p. 612
A long term condition not only brings the physical symptom of pain, but a number of psychological and social effects too. In 2014 the Department of Health recognised that the impact of having a long term condition can contribute to mental health problems like depression and anxiety (Department of Health, 2014). As well as finding ways to manage their physical symptoms, patients are encouraged to adopt acknowledge and address all of their health and wellbeing needs, in particular self-management at home and incorporating and educating the patient’s family and close friends as a support system (Kraaimaat and Evers, 2003). The suffering that a person with chronic pain endures not only impacts on their life, but also affects their family, time lost from employment and uses up precious healthcare resources.
In the United States 54 million people have a disability and only 15 percent were born with a disability (Jaeger & Bowman, 2005). If a person lives long enough, it is statistically likely that they will develop some kind of disability in their advancing years (Jaeger & Bowman, 2005). At some point in your life you could have experience a fractured bone, a minor cut, or had some type of surgery. Imagine after some minor injury that you may not even remember and then experiencing a constant pain so agonizing that no amount of pain medication can make you comfortable (Lang & Moskovitz, 2003). Some additional symptoms that you may also experience are severe burning pain, changes in bone and skin, excessive sweating, tissue swelling and extreme sensitivity to touch (Juris, 2005). These symptoms are associated with a disease that is called Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy (RSD) but more recently termed as complex regional pain syndrome, type 1 (CRPS 1) (Juris, 2005). For simplification purposes this disease will be referred to as RSD throughout this paper.
The composite score is objective and calculated through a weighted formula designed to provide an equal contribution from each item while the severity rating is subjective and indicates the need for additional treatment in specific areas (Haraguchi et al., 2009). The SR ranges from 0 to 9 points and the CS ranges from 0 to 1 with anything higher than the normal 9 SR or 1 CS indicating greater problem severities (Haraguchi et al., 2009). Although some problems still exist, the ASI has been reported to have nearly achieved both reliability and validity (Haraguchi et al.,
Beck, A. T., Steer, R. A., & Brown, G. (1996). Beck Depression Inventory-II. Retrieved August 18, 2011from EBSCOhost.
Mavandadi, S., Ten Have, T. R., Katz, I. R., Durai, U. B., Krahn, D. D., Llorente, M. D., & ... Oslin, D. W. (2007). Effect of Depression Treatment on Depressive Symptoms in Older Adulthood: The Moderating Role of Pain. Journal Of The American Geriatrics Society, 55(2), 202-211. doi:10.1111/j.1532-5415.2007.01042.x
During my residency, I had the opportunity to work with the Rheumatology Rehabilitation team at the University of Alberta (U of A). I met passionate mentors in physical and occupational therapy dedicated to helping arthritis patients preserve and optimize joint function. There was one man with rheumatoid arthritis attending the program who said the most important learning point he wanted me to take away was how much his rheumatologist and the rehab team had changed his life. Prior to starting biologic therapy, he was completely debilitated in his day-to-day life and unable to perform simple activities such as picking up his young children. He now found himself not only with disease control, but also quality of life. I value the multidisciplinary approach in rheumatology and emphasis on treating the “whole” patient, rather than a single organ
...being able to analyze this data, due to the fact that there are contradictions in the types of data being collected. There were several other limitations that were outlined by the authors at the end of the article. Since there were two different populations of participants from which data was collected, it was hard to control environmental factors such as the way the information was received and the two different regions in which the participants were from. Budget constraints were another limitation to this study, as one must entice participants in some way or another, and it was difficult to find participants who were willing to participate for little compensation. Finally, this data set was from one single survey of participants, so there was no way to determine the effects of time in the changing attitudes or psychological distress over a longer period of time.
O'Grady, M. (2010). Depression History, Depression Vulnerability, and the Experience of Everyday Negative Events. Journal Of Social & Clinical Psychology, 29(9), 949-974.
Fibromyalgia is a human disorder that often causes pain in the musculoskeletal section, fatigue and muscle stiffness. Pains can be felt in joints particularly in the knees, ankle and elbows. It is a serious disorder that can cause an individual to be ineffective in performing daily chores and activities. Depression on the other hand is characterized by intense dejection. It involves the feelings of sadness and worthlessness. In particular, this paper examines a case study of Beverly, a 42 year old woman, who happens to have been diagnosed with the two disorders. The aim is to explore some of the causes that might have led to the development of the disorders and how the problems can be reversed in order to restore the well-being of the patient.
Medical professionals focused on identifying and treating symptoms through physical means such as drugs and surgery, and mostly ignored the role of mental states in the prevention and treatment of disease. To most doctors, the immune system is regarded as an autonomous entity, operating independently of the mind and behavior. Since the 1960's, however, researchers have realized that these ideas are incorrect, and have since been looking at the mind-body connection more closely and with more respect. In 1964, George Solomon, a psychiatrist, noticed that rheumatoid arthritis worsened when people were depressed. He was fascinated by this connection, and began to investigate the impact of emotions on inflammation and immune function in general.
The common effects of stress on the body are “headache, muscle tension or pain, chest pain, fatigue, stomach upset, and sleep problems.” (Mayo clinic staff). Also, there other stress symptoms. The stress effect not just on the heath of the body, but also on the mood and emotions. Therefore, the stress symptoms on the mood are “restlessness, lack of motivation or focus, irritability or anger, and sadness or depression” (Mayo clinic staff). When the stress will hurt the person physically, mentally, and emotionally. The human being naturally will look and search for pain reliever. Some people will look for a good treatment, but the other will not care if the treatment is good or bad, they just want a pain reliever. So, there research will deviates to wrong paths. For example they will use the drugs to reduce their pain or someone will not use these really bad stuff, but they may acquire bad habit or do something else will effect badly on the body and mood. Therefore, the effect of the stress on the behavior are “drug or alcohol abuse, tobacco use, social withdrawal, angry outbursts, and overeating or undereating.” (Mayo clinic staff). There are more other effects on the behavior. Actually, the stress symptoms on the behavior depends on the personality of the
Since stress can seriously damage individuals’ health and well-being in this paper, the researcher will identify stress, the causes, and treatment.
Stressors are both physiological and psychological demands placed on an individual from both internal and external environments that can disturb homeostasis. This disruption requires an action to return the body to a balance. Being able to recognize, understand, and cope with stress is critical to overall health and well being of an individual. The ability to cope with stress productively can alter the outcome of illness and prevent negative health outcomes altogether. Each person experiences and perceives stress differently both physiologically, psychologically, and can portray it differently externally. The way in which each person handles stress can influence the path for care they pursue if illness is present. In the absence of remedial