Coping strategies among individuals with multiple physical symptoms: A general population-based cross-sectional study 2023 Raasthøj et al

Highlights

• High approach is associated with lower probability for having multiple symptoms.
• while high resignation and diversion is associated with higher probability.
• Exclusion of respondents with chronic disease did not alter the main results.
• Coping could be important for prevention and treatment of multiple symptoms.

Abstract

Objective
Coping has been suggested as a perpetuating factor for physical symptoms. The aim of this study was to examine the use of the coping strategies approach, resignation, and diversion in individuals with multiple physical symptoms according to the construct of Bodily Distress Syndrome (BDS).

Methods
This cross-sectional study was part of the nationwide web-based survey Danish Symptom Cohort (DaSC). In total, 100,000 individuals were invited to participate, and individuals eligible for the present study were respondents aged 20–64 years without a current or recent pregnancy. Multiple physical symptoms were identified using the BDS checklist, and coping was assessed by the Brief Approach/Avoidance Coping Questionnaire. Statistical analyses included descriptive statistics and multinomial and logistic regression.

Results
A total of 35,810 respondents were included in the study, of which 8512 (23.8%) fulfilled the criteria for having multiple physical symptoms. This group of respondents had lower coping scores on approach and higher coping scores on resignation and diversion compared with the non-BDS group. The regression analyses showed that high scores on approach were associated with a lower probability of having multiple symptoms (adjusted OR 0.92, 95% CI: 0.91–0.92), whereas high scores on diversion and resignation were associated with a higher probability of having multiple symptoms (adjusted OR 1.10; 95% CI: 1.09–1.11 and adjusted OR 1.19; 95% CI: 1.18–1.20, respectively).

Conclusion
The study supports the hypothesis that experiencing multiple physical symptoms is associated with certain coping strategies. This is relevant knowledge for health care professionals who will be treating this patient group.

Open access, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022399922004251

 

An impressive waste of funding. 35K respondents. When they say coping, they don't mean coping, they mean whatever this questionnaire says: https://novopsych.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/brief-cope_PDF-assessment-scoring.pdf. It's a bizarre questionnaire that mostly substitutes to how impactful, but it's so vague and generic you can interpret this as freely as astrology.

Seems like in addition to being baffled by illness, medical professionals are baffled at the concept of intelligence, that intelligent beings adapt to a changing reality, and that being a third-party observer who doesn't understand the changes is irrelevant as to whether they are happening or not. But more than anything what they don't understand is that it's not disease that is disabling, it's symptoms, illness. Disease causes symptoms, which are disabling, disease itself cannot be felt. Disease without symptoms will go completely unnoticed, because the only thing we can notice is its impact. And here they express surprise that people adapt to disability.

Concepts that can't be evaluated, like "approach" and "resignation" are just as useful in real life as Tarot cards. WTH? Fake numbers can't be processed in a way that will make them real, this is not a thing.

Just mindless repetition of the same idea:

The evidence reviewed by Deary et al. leading to the cognitive behavioral model reflects a welcome move from purely “psychological” models to a more complex multifactorial approach including genetics, early experiences, personality traits as neuroticism, psychological distress as anxiety and depression, sensitisation in brain and body, attention, beliefs, and behavior [17].​

Up-to-date, for the late 19th century.

 

Yes, this would also include you as focussing too much on researching your symptoms/being obsessed or whatever, which is part of the criteria for one of them - BDS, SSD, etc etc i cant rmemeber which but basically you fulfill that part of the criteria when you do too much research/reading etc trying to solve the problem.

Which just reiterates the main point of everything the BPS lot do or say about us, which is that whatever you're doing you're doing it wrong.

However i do wonder if the 'approach' thing is actually more like exposure - so brief approach would be 'doing a little bit of what brings on symptoms'? So for us it would be doing what causes PEM, but not too much of it. Rather than resigning oneself to the fact that those activities cannot be done & avoiding them.

But there again, its arbitrary what is too much & the arbiter is 'if youre not recovered it was either too much or too little, regardless of the quantity - ie you did it wrong whatever you did, you must have done because you're not better.

 

and on top of all the above concerns, it's a cross-sectional study! No conclusions of causality in either direction should be drawn. these are associations only.

 

From a statistical standpoint casual relationships do not Imply correlation.
So this research paper is just basically fluff
[Stats major]