Papers by katrien verhoeven
Many researchers have investigated the impact of BRCA gene testing on psychological well-being, b... more Many researchers have investigated the impact of BRCA gene testing on psychological well-being, but results are equivocal. Heterogeneous findings may point to the role of influencing factors. The current questionnaire study investigates the relationship between genetic testing, psychological well-being, and surveillance behavior. The role of sex, age, SES, carrier status, time since testing, number of children, and coping is examined. The research sample consists of 119 presymptomatic BRCA mutation carriers and non-carriers (Mage=41.71,SD=11.05). Results indicated that genetic testing is related to psychological wellbeing over time. Women report more distress than men, carriers more than non-carriers. Coping at the moment of the genetic testing also influences psychological well-being over time. The more people used an emotion-oriented and problem-oriented coping style at the moment of testing, the lower their psychological wellbeing over time. Results furthermore indicated that sur...
Psychologie & gezondheid, 2011
Pain, 2014
Note: Standardized betas of the last step are displayed, (a) p=.05, *p< 05, **p<.01,***p<.001 Hie... more Note: Standardized betas of the last step are displayed, (a) p=.05, *p< 05, **p<.01,***p<.001 Hierarchical regression analyses with group, inhibition, switching and memory capacity as predictors and attention to pain, pain intensity and pain affect as criterion variables.
Pain, 2011
Preliminary evidence suggests that pain catastrophizing in children may be important in understan... more Preliminary evidence suggests that pain catastrophizing in children may be important in understanding how parents respond to their child's pain. However, no study has investigated whether parental responses, in turn, moderate the impact of child's catastrophizing upon pain outcomes. The present study was designed to address this, and investigated the association of the child's catastrophizing with different types of parental responses (ie, solicitousness, discouragement and coping promoting responses) and the extent to which parental responses moderate the association between the child's catastrophizing and disability. Participants were 386 school children and their parents. Analyses revealed significant associations between the child's pain catastrophizing and parental responses, but with mothers and fathers evidencing different patterns; ie, higher levels of the child's catastrophizing were significantly associated with lower levels of solicitousness ...
The journal of pain : official journal of the American Pain Society, 2008
Little is known about how a child's experience of pain affects his or her parents. Using a v... more Little is known about how a child's experience of pain affects his or her parents. Using a vignette methodology, this study investigated the emotional responses of parents who were asked to imagine different painful situations that their child might experience. A sample of 650 parents of school children (325 mothers; 325 fathers) read 8 short stories/vignettes about their child, which varied in terms of type of situation (pain vs other stressful situation), intensity (high vs low), and frequency of occurrence (high vs low). The role of individual differences in parental catastrophizing about their child's pain, catastrophizing about their own pain, dispositional empathy, and gender was also investigated. Parents' dispositional empathy was found to have an impact on parental distress and concern for their child. Catastrophizing about their child's pain had a unique contribution to parents' emotional responses to the vignettes describing their child in pain, b...
Experimental Brain Research, 2010
Distraction is a common method of pain control that is often found to be eVective. However, it is... more Distraction is a common method of pain control that is often found to be eVective. However, it is still largely unexplored which components of distraction are responsible for its eVects. This study investigated the role of the spatial location of task-relevant stimuli in the eVectiveness of distraction. Two experiments were performed in which the spatial location of visual stimuli during nociceptive input was manipulated. In a Wrst experiment, we tested whether the reaction to nociceptive information is slower when visual stimuli are presented at a diVerent spatial location than at the same spatial location. In a second experiment, we examined whether the manipulation of spatial location aVects the experience of pain. Overall, results indicated that directing attention away from the pain location results in a slower response to painful stimuli and a reduction in pain. It may be concluded that the analgesic eVect of distraction is at least partly the result of the spatial location of the distracting information.
European Journal of Pain, 2011
Although many studies have investigated the effectiveness of distraction as a method of pain cont... more Although many studies have investigated the effectiveness of distraction as a method of pain control, the cognitive processes by which attentional redirection is achieved, remain unclear. In this study the role of executive functioning abilities (inhibition, task switching and working memory) in the effectiveness of distraction is investigated. We hypothesized that the effectiveness of distraction in terms of pain reduction would be larger in participants with better executive functioning abilities. Ninety-one undergraduate students first performed executive functioning tasks and subsequently participated in a cold pressor task (CPT). Participants were randomly assigned to (1) a distraction group, in which an attention-demanding tone-detection task was performed during the CPT, or (2) a control group, in which no distraction task was performed. Participants in the distraction group reported significantly less pain during the CPT, but the pain experience was not influenced by executive functioning abilities. However, distraction task performance improved with better inhibition abilities, indicating that inhibition abilities might be important in focussing on a task despite the pain.
European Journal of Pain, 2006
Background: The morbidity of CRPS type 1 generally has been associated with psychosocial stressor... more Background: The morbidity of CRPS type 1 generally has been associated with psychosocial stressors, especially in children and adolescents. Individual cases that clearly show direct relationships between psychological factors and CRPS type 1 are rare, however, and thus definite case stories are beneficial. Case story: 15 months after father had left his family, a 12 year old boy stopped using his left leg following a minor trauma. Despite several hospitalisations with arthroscopy and examination in general anaesthesia, his leg gradually worsened developing dystrophy, allodynia and constant pain. He was not able to move his knee and nobody was allowed to touch his leg. He was later mobilised at St. Olav’s Hospital while having continuous epidural anaesthesia. A thorough bio-psycho-social pain investigation uncovered repressed psychological aspects. His mother disclosed information to the pain nurse about the real reason why her former husband moved, which was to establish a gay relationship. The boy got no explanation why his father left, and felt guilty about his fathers leaving. After half a year with specific psychological treatment based on this new information, he managed to visit his father and new gay partner accompanied by his mother and his leg recovered completely with mobilisation during pain control. Comment: Although it is often assumed that psychological factors are important in CRPS I for children, it is rare that fulminant cases with grave immobilisation will recover completely after psychological treatment.
European Journal of Pain, 2009
Patients rated average weekly pain (VAS), general health status (SF-36), depression (BDI), anxiet... more Patients rated average weekly pain (VAS), general health status (SF-36), depression (BDI), anxiety (STAI) and catastrophizing (CSQ). Pressure was applied to the thumb nail by a computer-controlled stimulator. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was performed during individually calibrated pressures representing 50mm on a 100mm VAS and non-painful pressures. The onsets of the stimulations were randomly jittered over the scanning time preventing subjects from anticipating the onset time and event type. Results: A correlation analysis (Pearson’s) including all self-ratings showed that depression, anxiety and catastrophizing scores were significantly correlated (p < 0.001), but did not correlate with average weekly pain, nor with sensitivity to pressure pain. However, the subjective rating of general health was inversely correlated with ratings of depression (p < 0.001) and anxiety (p < 0.001). Results from the three imaging analyses where depression-, anxietyor cathastrophizing scores were used as co-variates showed no significant results, i.e. brain activity during pressure pain was not modulated by different levels of depression, anxiety, or catastrophizing. Conclusion: This present study provides evidence for two segregated neurofunctional mechanisms involved in pain and depression in FMS. This study was performed as part of a placebo controlled drug intervention study (EudraCT # 2004–004249–16) financed by Pierre Fabre
gedrag en gezondheid
The role of somatosensory amplification and trait anxiety This study investigates the fear of bre... more The role of somatosensory amplification and trait anxiety This study investigates the fear of breast cancer recurrence and its relationship with trait anxiety and somatosensory amplification. Fifty-six former Belgian breast cancer patients participated in a questionnaire study which included the'Fear of Recurrence Questionnaire' (Northouse, 1981), the'Somatosensory Amplification Scale' (Barsky et al., 1988) and the'State-Trait Anxiety Inventory' (Spielberger et al., 1983). Results indicated that the majority experienced fear of cancer recurrence. Participants who were more vigilant to somatic arousal, reported more fear of disease recurrence. Results are discussed in terms of the prevention of fear of recurrence.
Pain, 2010
Research on the effectiveness of distraction as a method of pain control is inconclusive. One mec... more Research on the effectiveness of distraction as a method of pain control is inconclusive. One mechanism pertains to the motivational relevance of distraction tasks. In this study the motivation to engage in a distraction task during pain was experimentally manipulated. Undergraduate students (N=73) participated in a cold pressor test (CPT) and were randomly assigned to three groups: a distraction-only group performed a tone-detection task during ther CPT, a motivated-distraction group performed the same task and received a monetary reward for good task performance, and a control group did not perform the tone-detection task. Results indicated that engagement in the distraction task was better in the motivated-distraction group in comparison with the distraction-only group. Participants in both distraction groups experienced less pain compared to the control group. There were no overall differences in pain intensity between the two distraction groups. The effect of distraction was influenced by the level of catastrophic thinking about pain. For low catastrophizers, both distraction groups reported less pain as compared to the nondistracted control group. This was not the case for high catastrophizers. For high catastrophizers it mattered whether the distraction task was motivationally relevant: High catastrophizers reported less intense pain in the motivated distraction group, as compared to the non-distracted control group. We conclude that increasing the motivational relevance of the distraction task may increase the effects of distraction, especially for those who catastrophize about pain.
European Journal of Pain, 2012
Distraction is an intuitive way of coping with pain and is often used in children&amp;#x27;s ... more Distraction is an intuitive way of coping with pain and is often used in children&amp;#x27;s pain treatment programs. However, empirical evidence concerning the effectiveness of distraction is equivocal. One potential explanation might be that distraction does not work for everyone in every situation. In the current series of studies, we examined the role of pain catastrophizing as an influencing factor of distraction effectiveness. In the first study, we investigated the use of pain coping strategies (including distraction) in schoolchildren (N=828, aged 8-18years) by means of a questionnaire. Results indicated that children with higher levels of pain catastrophizing reported using less distraction strategies in daily life than children with lower levels of pain catastrophizing. In the second study, a subsample (N=81, aged 9-18years) performed a painful cold pressor task (CPT) (12°C). Participants were randomly assigned to a distraction group, in which an attention-demanding tone-detection task was performed during the CPT, or a control group, in which no distraction task was performed. Results showed that participants in the distraction group were engaged in the distraction task, and reported to have paid less attention to pain than participants in the control group. However, distraction was ineffective in reducing cold pressor pain, and even intensified the pain experience in high catastrophizing children. Caution may be warranted in using distraction as a &amp;#x27;one size fits all&amp;#x27; method, especially in high catastrophizing children.
Background and Aims: Chronic pain is often characterized by impaired cognitive functioning, belie... more Background and Aims: Chronic pain is often characterized by impaired cognitive functioning, believed to be the consequence of excessive attentional processing of pain. Recent theoretical views on coping have suggested that attention dysfunction might also result from an excessive focus on pain control and persistent attempts to solve the pain problem. However, this idea awaits empirical corroboration. In this study we experimentally tested whether the goal of controlling pain biases attentional processing. Methods: Sixteen undergraduate students performed a visual cueing task typically used to measure allocation of attention. During this task, participants received random pain stimuli to the nondominant arm. Participants were instructed that good performance on trials containing one specific cue would stop the pain stimuli. We hypothesized that more attention would be allocated to such “pain control” cues than to neutral cues. Results: For each participant we calculated the percentage of errors for the different trial types. Based upon these error percentages, we calculated an attention index separately for pain control cues and neutral cues. We found that this attention index was significantly larger for pain control cues than for neutral cues (t(15) = 2.24, p < 0.05). Discussion: The results show that attention is preferentially allocated to information that is related to control pain. An implication of our findings is that cognitive dysfunction in chronic pain patients is not only due to attentional biases to pain, but might also result from persistent attempts to acquire control over pain.
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Papers by katrien verhoeven