Coupling with COVID: The Role of Dyadic Coping in Relationship Satisfaction and Psychological Distress during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Models of dyadic coping suggest that facing a stressful situation, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, with one's partner to meet their needs is associated with positive outcomes. This study explored dyadic coping and its association with relationship satisfaction and distress in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected online from 564 participants.

A Brief Survey of the COVID-19 Pandemic's Impact on the Chronic Pain Experience.

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic has forced sweeping social and behavioral changes that have adversely affected the general population. Many changes, such as business closures, working from home, increased psychological distress, and delayed access to health care, could have unique adverse effects on patients diagnosed with chronic pain (CP). The present study sought to examine perceived changes in the CP experience brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Impact of Emotional Regulation Strategies on Pain Catastrophizing in the Context of Interpersonal Relationships.

Objectives: The Communal Coping Model suggests that pain catastrophizing may serve to elicit support from others. What is not known is how emotional regulation, namely emotional inhibition, impacts pain catastrophizing within the context of an interpersonal relationship. Individuals who have a greater tendency to emotionally inhibit may have a greater likelihood to use catastrophizing as a means for seeking support, particularly in relationships characterized by satisfaction and emotional validation.

Social Media and Couples: What Are the Important Factors for Understanding Relationship Satisfaction?

The current study sought to examine specific Facebook behaviors, related to one's relationship and their association with relationship satisfaction. Data were collected from 115 undergraduates who were in a relationship and had an active Facebook account. Participants completed a number of measures focused on their relationship and gave the researcher access to their Facebook profiles to record the frequency of all posts (comments and status updates), pictures, tags, and likes from the previous two weeks.

Couples' Relationship Satisfaction and Its Association with Depression and Spouse Responses Within the Context of Chronic Pain Adjustment.

Background: Chronic pain is one specific health condition where couple relationships have been directly linked to physical and psychological outcomes. Understanding how relationship satisfaction, couple dynamics, and pain adjustment interrelate is crucial for nurses who provide patient-centered care for patients with pain.

Aims: The current study was aimed at examining the associations of depressive symptoms and spouse response styles with relationship satisfaction in the context of West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory classifications.

Pain catastrophizing differs between and within West Haven-Yale Multidimensonal Pain Inventory (MPI) pain adjustment classifications: theoretical and clinical implications from preliminary data.

Objectives: Pain catastrophizing is associated with multiple pain outcomes, and is differentially associated with the adaptive coping (AC), dysfunctional (DYS), and interpersonally distressed (ID) coping classifications of the West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory (MPI). We examined how catastrophizing, and the underlying components of magnification, rumination, and helplessness, may relate to MPI classifications and differentially relate to pain outcomes across classification groups to inform clinical treatment planning.

Materials And Methods: Sixty-nine adults (70% women) diagnosed with musculoskeletal pain were recruited from 2 pain clinics and completed self-report measures of pain severity, the MPI, Pain Catastrophizing Scale, and the Mood and Anxiety Symptom Questionnaire.

Correlates of spousal empathic accuracy for pain-related thoughts and feelings.

Objectives: This study explored correlates of spousal ability to infer the thoughts and feelings of individuals with chronic pain (ICPs).

Methods: Participant couples (N=57), who consisted of at least 1 couple member with chronic pain, engaged in a videotaped discussion about pain, after which they completed an empathic accuracy procedure where spouses of ICP were asked to infer thoughts/feelings of ICPs.

Results: Overall levels of partner empathic accuracy were similar to other studies of couples.

Association between pain catastrophizing, spouse responses to pain, and blood pressure in chronic pain patients: a pathway to potential comorbidity.

Background: Chronic pain has been shown to be highly comorbid with other medical conditions. Theoretical and empirical associations between pain and cardiovascular health can be made based on the current literature. Psychosocial variables associated with the pain experience may, however, have an impact on cardiovascular health.

How do I empathize with you? Let me count the ways: relations between facets of pain-related empathy.

Unlabelled: This study examined the extent to which components of empathy (ie, empathic accuracy, empathic tendencies, and empathic responses) were correlated within the context of chronic pain couples. Additionally, the interrelationships between these empathy variables and spouse responses to pain were investigated. Participants were 57 couples in which at least 1 spouse reported chronic musculoskeletal pain.

A preliminary investigation of cognitive appraisal and cardiovascular reactivity and recovery in Arab Americans.

Background: Arab Americans exhibit higher rates of hypertension and other cardiovascular risk factors relative to national averages. While research suggests some minorities may exhibit increased cardiovascular reactivity (CVR) to, and slowed recovery from, stress compared to Whites, which may represent a risk factor for hypertension and cardiovascular disease, this has not been studied in Arab Americans. This study examined differences between Arab Americans and Whites in cognitive appraisal, and blood pressure and heart rate (HR) reactivity and recovery to laboratory stressors.

Pain affects spouses too: personal experience with pain and catastrophizing as correlates of spouse distress.

Chronic pain has adverse effects on individuals with chronic pain (ICPs) as well as their family members. Borrowing from an empathy model described by Goubert et al. (2005), we examined top-down and bottom-up factors that may be related to psychological well-being in the spouses of ICPs.

Chronic pain in a couples context: a review and integration of theoretical models and empirical evidence.

Unlabelled: Researchers have become increasingly interested in the social context of chronic pain conditions. The purpose of this article is to provide an integrated review of the evidence linking marital functioning with chronic pain outcomes including pain severity, physical disability, pain behaviors, and psychological distress. We first present an overview of existing models that identify an association between marital functioning and pain variables.

The significant other version of the Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS-S): preliminary validation.

Researchers have hypothesized that pain catastrophizing has a social function. Although work has focused on the catastrophizing of individuals with chronic pain (ICPs), little is known about the pain catastrophizing of their significant others. The purpose of this study was to test the validity of a revised version of the original PCS [Sullivan MJL, Bishop S, Pivik J.

Factors associated with marital satisfaction and mood among spouses of persons with chronic back pain.

Unlabelled: Few studies have examined the impact of chronic pain on the spouse. In this study the impact of pain and disability as rated by both the patient and the spouse on spouse marital satisfaction and affective distress was examined in 110 couples. Zero-order correlations indicated that absolute ratings of perceived disability by the spouse, rather than discrepancies between spouse and patient ratings, were most highly associated with spouse marital dissatisfaction and affective distress.

What are the marital problems of patients with chronic pain?

Throughout the past two decades, researchers have studied the close relationships of patients to understand the role that these relationships play in the maintenance and alleviation of pain and the role that pain plays in affecting relationships. In this article, a brief review of the evidence is provided, showing a link between marital functioning and pain, and the marital problems reported by patients with chronic pain in our studies also are described. We provide information about several promising couples pain management and couples therapy approaches that appear to help couples manage pain together.