Illness representation, coping and outcome in @entity1744 ( XXXX ).

@entity1 @entity308 @entity5786 @entity148 @entity1744
OBJECTIVE: @entity1744 has no observable symptom markers and there is little that the medical profession can do to help sufferers. Psychotherapy, antidepressants and drugs aimed at the most problematic symptoms have been shown to have limited efficacy. In an attempt to help understand the illness better, and to suggest alternative forms of intervention, the study tested whether outcome might be influenced by @entity1 ' representation of their illness and by their coping strategies. METHOD: All members of the @entity1744 Network (an independent charitable support network based in the UK) were invited to participate via their quarterly newsletter, and 209 completed questionnaires were returned. @entity1 completed the Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ), the @entity5786 , and the Hospital Anxiety and @entity308 Scale (HADS), and rated their quality of life and their satisfaction with their health. RESULTS: The reporting of serious consequences was associated with lower quality of life and lower satisfaction with health, and with higher scores for @entity148 and @entity308 (p <.001). Weaker control beliefs were related to lower quality of life, lower satisfaction with health, and higher @entity308 scores (p <.01). Lower illness scores were associated with more satisfaction with health (p <.01), but not with quality of life (p >.05). Psychological causal attribution of @entity1744 was positively correlated with @entity148 (p <.001) and @entity308 (p <.01). Path analyses based on multiple linear regression demonstrated that (1) the reporting of serious consequences was a strong independent predictor of outcome; (2) coping mediated the link between representation and outcome; and (3) when predicting @entity308 , coping strategies predicted coping independently of representation dimensions. CONCLUSIONS: The findings indicate that the illness representations of @entity1744 sufferers can have significant implications for outcome. Therapeutic interventions based on illness representations may prove useful for treatment.
