Depression and Abdominal Pain in IBS Patients

The Mediating Role of Catastrophizing

Bibliographic Data

ID19304256
AuthorsJeffrey M Lackner (0000-0002-9717-1353, Buffalo BioLabs, corresponding author), Brian M Quigley (0000-0002-3750-5171, Buffalo BioLabs), Edward B Blanchard (Buffalo BioLabs)
Year2004
Volume66
Issue3
Pages435-441
Publication date2004-05-01
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenuePsychosomatic Medicine (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0033-3174 • E-ISSN: 1534-7796
PublisherOvid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1097/00006842-200405000-00024
OpenAlexW4234049125
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited37

Objective: Depression has been linked to irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), but the mechanism underlying this relationship is unknown. This cross-sectional study explores the possibility that negatively skewed beliefs patients hold regarding abdominal pain (ie, catastrophizing) mediate the relationship between depression and pain severity. Methods: The sample included 244 consecutively evaluated individuals who met Rome II diagnosis for IBS without comorbid gastrointestinal disease and completed measures of pain severity, trait anxiety, catastrophizing, maladaptive beliefs, and depression as part of baseline assessment of an National Institutes of Health–funded randomized controlled trial of 2 nondrug treatments. Results: Using a mediational model involving a series of linear regressions, results indicated that pain catastrophizing partially mediated the link between depression and abdominal pain severity. Depression, catastrophizing, and control variables accounted for 21% of the variance in pain severity. The finding that patients with IBS with greater depression reported greater pain severity can be partially explained by their tendency to engage in more catastrophic thinking specific to pain. Conclusions: The relation between depression and pain is not, as psychogenic models predict, strictly a direct and linear one but works partly through patients’ beliefs regarding their pain in general and pain catastrophizing in specific. Implications of the findings for understanding and investigating the depression–IBS link from a biopsychosocial perspective are discussed

Abdominal pain · Anxiety · Biopsychosocial model · Chronic pain · Depression (economics) · Irritable bowel syndrome · Pain catastrophizing · Physical therapy · Psychiatry · Psychogenic disease · Clinical Psychology · Complementary and Alternative Medicine Studies · Gastrointestinal motility and disorders · Internal Medicine · Medicine · Musculoskeletal pain and rehabilitation · Psychology

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