BACKGROUND Albeit exercise is currently advocated as one of the most effective management strategies for fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS); the implementation of exercise as a FMS treatment in reality is significantly hampered by patients' poor compliance. The inference that pain catastrophizing is a key predictor of poor compliance in FMS patients, justifies considering the alteration of pain catast...

OBJECTIVE This research was designed to test the hypothesis that presurgery "catastrophizing" would predict postsurgical pain and postsurgical analgesic consumption. METHODS A sample of 48 individuals who underwent anterior cruciate ligament repair participated in the study. All participants completed the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (described by Sullivan et al in 1995) prior to surgery. Measu...

BACKGROUND The Institute of Medicine (IOM) reported that chronic pain affects about 100 million U.S. adults, with chronic low back pain (CLBP) cited as the most prevalent type. Pain catastrophizing is a psychological construct shown to predict the development and trajectory of chronic pain and patient response to pain treatments. While effective treatment for pain catastrophizing typically incl...

OBJECTIVE The current study examined the associations between catastrophizing and pain intensity, psychological adjustment, functional ability, and community participation in youths with physical disability and chronic pain. METHODS Participants consisted of 80 youths, aged 8-20 years, with cerebral palsy (n = 34), neuromuscular disease (n = 22), or spina bifida (n = 24). Measures from a cros...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the value of pain catastrophizing in explaining pain, disability, and somatic complaints, beyond negative affectivity (NA). METHOD Two cross-sectional studies, one in a sample of school children (n = 193) and a second in a clinical sample of children with recurrent or chronic pain (n = 43), were conducted. In both studies, measures of pain catastrophizing and NA were ...

The present study investigated whether dispositional self-handicapping (tendency to create or claim obstacles to performance in order to protect the self from negative attributions) predicts pain catastrophizing and self-reported pain. Based on the idea that exaggerated claims of pain provides a potential and an easy way to self-handicap, it was hypothesized that trait self-handicapping would b...

INTRODUCTION Fibromyalgia (FM), characterized by wide-spread diffuse pain and sensory abnormalities, is associated with elevated indices of distress and pain-related catastrophizing compared to both pain-free samples and those with chronic pain conditions. Catastrophizing is a pervasive negative mental set, and is a strong predictor of negative pain-related outcomes such as clinical pain intens...

Objectives: Pain catastrophizing is thought to play a causal role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain and its negative impact on functioning. However, few studies have examined the factors that might contribute to the development and maintenance of catastrophizing. The anterior asymmetry and emotion (AAE) model hypothesizes that more activity in left anterior brain regions is ass...

Background Researchers have recently begun to seek cognitive explanations for physical symptoms with no obvious biological cause. Concepts such as somatization, somatosensory amplification, and somatosensory catastrophizing have been invoked to explain these phenomena. Somatosensory amplification occurs when these bodily sensations become stronger and more painful. Somatosensory catastrophizing...

Preliminary evidence suggests that parental catastrophizing about their child's pain may be important in understanding both parental responses to their child's pain and the child's pain experience. However, little is known about potential differences between mothers and fathers. There were three aims of the present study addressing this lack of knowledge: (i) to investigate the three-factor str...