In the previous issue of Arthritis Research and Therapy, Brionez and colleagues show that helplessness, depression, and passive coping account for significant variability in self-reported functional limitations in patients with ankylosing spondylitis, beyond the effect of age, inflammation and radiographic damage.
The two factors, labeled 'functional coping' and 'dysfunctional coping,' accounted for 33.9% and 21.6% of the explained variance.
They found that in patients with AS helplessness, depression and passive coping accounted for significant variability in self-reported functional limitations as measured with the BASFI questionnaire.
Arthritis helplessness, depression, and passive coping accounted for significant variability in self-reported functional limitation beyond demographic and clinical variables in patients with AS.
To examine whether coping strategies accounted for a small, medium, or large amount of the variance in HRQoL, we used Cohen's convention for small (f 2 = .02), medium (f 2 = .15), and large effects (f 2 = .35) [ 39].
According to the OECD Mentall disorders account for one of the largest and fastest growing categories of the burden of disease with which health systems must cope, often accounting for a greater burden than cardiovascular disease and cancer".
In line with the cognitive theory of anxiety (e.g., Beck et al. 1985) and empirical research (e.g., Bögels and Zigterman 2000) we expected that the cognitive errors 'threat conclusion' and 'underestimation of the ability to cope' would account for a significant amount of the variance in anxiety.
We hypothesized that one reason for this finding is that these studies failed to take coping style into account.
In conclusion, our findings point to the importance of taking individual coping strategies into account when evaluating the impact of disease on psychosocial wellbeing.
The findings of this study indicate that care for patients with diabetes should address their physical, psychological, social and economic wellbeing and the findings point to the importance of taking individual coping strategies into account when evaluating the impact of diabetes on psychosocial wellbeing.
