PubMed · 9423443
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K J Stults. 1997. Lessons from Lorena.. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9423443/
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OBJECTIVE: To determine the contribution of psychological attributes (personality characteristics and coping styles) to the association between social class in childhood and adult health among men and women. DESIGN: Partly retrospective, partly cross sectional study conducted in the framework of the Dutch GLOBE study. SUBJECTS: Sample of general population from south east Netherlands consisting of 2174 men and women aged 25-74 years. Baseline self reported data from 1991 provided information on childhood and adult social class, psychological attributes, and general health. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: Self rated poor health. RESULTS: Independent of adult social class, low childhood social class was related to self rated poor health (odds ratio 1.67 (95% confidence interval 1.02 to 2.75) for subjects whose fathers were unskilled manual workers versus subjects whose fathers were higher grade professionals). Subjects whose fathers were manual workers generally had more unfavourable personality profiles and more negative coping styles. External locus of control, neuroticism, and the absence of active problem focused coping explained about half of the association between childhood social class and self rated poor health. The findings were independent of adult social class and height. CONCLUSIONS: A higher prevalence of negative personality profiles and adverse coping styles in subjects who grew up in lower social classes explains part of the association between social class in childhood and adult health. This finding underlines the importance of psychological mechanisms in the examination of the negative effects of adverse socioeconomic conditions in childhood.
BACKGROUND: Stress coping is defined as a behavioral or cognitive response of an individual to uncomfortable or difficult situations. It has been suggested that coping, like personality, is related to the pathology and course of mental disorders. Accordingly, we here used a clinical sample to investigate the relationships between coping strategies and personality traits. METHODS: Subjects were 60 outpatients who were in remission from major depressive disorder and who completed the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations (CISS) and the Munich Personality Test (MPT). RESULTS: Task-oriented coping showed a positive correlation with extraversion and frustration tolerance. Emotion-oriented coping was closely associated with neuroticism, esoteric tendencies and isolation tendency. Avoidance-oriented coping was related to extraversion. Principal component analysis indicated three corresponding factors between coping and personality; one was related to psychopathology (loading from the neuroticism, esoteric tendencies and isolation tendency scales of the MPT, and from the emotion-oriented coping scale of the CISS), a second was a social-adaptive ability component (loading from the frustration tolerance and extraversion scales of the MPT, and from the task-oriented coping and avoidance-oriented coping scales of the CISS), and a third was a passive-avoidance coping component (loaded from the emotion-oriented coping and avoidance-oriented coping scales of the CISS only). CONCLUSION: Some personality traits such as extraversion and frustration tolerance are significantly related to task-oriented coping, and psychopathological personality traits such as neuroticism are associated with emotional-oriented coping in major depressive disorder.
BACKGROUND: Over the last years the way in which patients with chronic physical illness respond to their illness (illness behavior) has been explored by several studies. This study sought to examine characteristics of illness behavior and to investigate the association between illness behavior and psychosocial and clinical variables among asymptomatic HIV-infected subjects. METHODS: Seventy-three asymptomatic HIV+ outpatients completed self-report questionnaires to evaluate illness behavior (Illness Behavior Questionnaire), psychological stress symptoms (Brief Symptom Inventory), personality variables (External Locus of Control and Courtauld Emotional Control Scales) and social support (Social Provision Scale). RESULTS: Psychological morbidity ('caseness' = 34%) was associated with a pattern of illness behavior characterized by conviction of disease progression, irritability, dysphoria, psychological perception of illness and low denial. Individual capacity to express emotions, adequate levels of social support and low levels of depression, as well as clinical variables (high number of CD4+ cells, recent notification of HIV infection and nonintravenous drug use category) influenced a more adaptive illness behavior. Psychological stress and low CD4+ cell count were the main predictors of the affective dimension of illness behavior. CONCLUSIONS: Psychosocial variables resulted to influence the tendency to interpret illness in a nonadaptive way in asymptomatic HIV-infected subjects. Such variables merit to be routinely examined within the doctor-patient relationship in AIDS clinics.