Keefe and colleagues [ 25] have organized these into two general categories: factors associated with poor pain control (catastrophizing, anxiety and fear, helplessness) and factors associated with effective pain control (self efficacy, pain coping strategies, readiness to change).
Although initial studies by psychologists such as Martin E.P. Seligman indicated that learned helplessness was a factor of depression, it was soon discovered that not all students who had acquired learned helplessness were depressed.
As shown in Table 1, in the present study we extracted four factors: helplessness, disheartenment, sense of failure, and dysphoria.
This effect could serve as a protective factor against helplessness and maybe post-traumatic stress.
Örücü and Demir [ 15] had described these two factors as "perceived helplessness" and "perceived self efficacy".
The score may be taken as a whole or as individual factors of rumination, helplessness, and magnification.
Our results suggest that the prolonged exposure to the environment provided by the organisation that was the object of our study turned out to be a significant risk factor for developing the helplessness characterising the "worn-out" profile.
I can discern at least three factors: novelty, sense of helplessness and lack of warning.
Sixty-five chronic pain patients, participating in a 4-week multidisciplinary program, completed measures of pain helplessness, catastrophizing, pain-related anxiety (process factors), pain severity, interference, activity level and depression (outcomes) at pre-, mid- and posttreatment.
Furthermore, the effect of patient reported outcomes such as helplessness could be mediated through several factors.
