Title:
Coping styles and strategies and vulnerability to chronic pain: individual differences and implications for psychological intervention.
Funding agency:
UMA, Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología.
Chief researcher:
Rosa Esteve
Aims:
To test a theoretical model of chronic pain derived from the general framework of the process analysis of stress, and to design a psychological treatment aimed at changing the factors that, according to our previous results, modulate the experience of pain.
Title:
Psychological screening in chronic pain syndromes and its usefulness to predict the prognosis of therapeutic interventions
Funding agency:
Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia
Chief researcher:
Alicia Eva López Martínez
Aims:
To develop a psychological screening device to predict the outcome of surgical and other medical interventions. This assessment system will contribute to improving medical treatments by detecting the characteristics of patients that can create significant barriers to recovery.
Title:
Psychosocial variables involved in the development of chronic pain
Funding agency:
Junta de Andalucía y Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación
Chief researcher:
Carmen Ramírez Maestre
Aims:
To test a theoretical model of the psychological variables involved in the development of pain chronicity within a framework that combines longitudinal and cross-sectional designs. The model includes the variables vulnerability and positive resources.
Title:
The motivational perspective of the fear-avoidance model of chronic pain: optimism, goal conflict and disability.
Funding Agency:
Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad
Chief researcher:
Rosa Esteve
Aims:
To determine if interference between chronic pain and patients’ important life goals (goal conflict) is associated with higher avoidance and disability. To investigate the role of optimism, positive affectivity, and self-efficacy in the patients’ management of life goals.
Abstract:
Chronic pain can seriously interfere with patients’ lives and, in the long term, cause a high degree of disability. During the last decade, the “Fear-avoidance Model of Chronic Pain” (Vlaeyen & Linton, 2000) has been the main theoretical frame of reference in research into the psychological factors associated with chronic pain disability. This model has been criticized and a re-formulation has been proposed based on the motivational perspective (Crombez et al., 2012; Vlaeyen and Linton, 2012). This project is based on this new perspective and has the following aims: a) to examine if the interference of chronic pain with the patients’ important life goals (goal conflict) is associated with higher fear of pain, avoidance, pain hypervigilance, catastrophizing, and lower pain acceptance; b) to examine if optimism, positive affectivity and self-efficacy are associated with the efficient management of goal conflicts between pain-related goals and other important life goals and, c) to examine if persistence and flexible goal adjustment mediate the relationship between optimism, positive affectivity, self-efficacy and the patients’ wellbeing.
The present project is made up of two studies lasting 24 months each that will be conducted in two samples of patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain who attended the Rheumatology Unit of the Hospital Costa del Sol de Marbella. The aim of Study 1 is to examine the relationships between goal conflicts, fear-avoidance, optimism, positive affectivity and self-efficacy.
The aim of Study 2 will be to determine if persistence in pursuing goals and the flexible adjustment of goals mediate the relationship between optimism and positive affectivity and wellbeing in patients with chronic pain. Each participant will complete a goal assessment procedure, an instrument that evaluates goal disengagement and goal reengagement, dispositional optimism, affectivity, social support, self-efficacy and personal wellbeing.
According to previous evidence it is hypothesized that: a) Patients who pursue valued life goals unrelated to pain will report less pain intensity, fear of pain, pain catastrophizing, pain hypervigilance, and disability; b) patients whose primary goal is to eliminate pain will show lower pain acceptance; c) patients with higher positive affectivity and who are more optimistic will persist more in goal attainment. Thus, they will experience more goal conflicts; however, these conflicts will be resource conflicts and there will be a better balance between goal value, expectancy, and conflict. Consequently, they will have higher scores in wellbeing; and d) when patients who are more optimistic and have higher positive affectivity and social support repeatedly fail to attain certain goals, they will substitute these goals with attainable goals, which, in turn, will be associated with greater psychological wellbeing.
