EPA-1585 - The role of identifications in women specific fears

Abstract

Because the biologically related members of a family shareunique properties, identifications with family members are the strongest andhardest to change. Hence, beliefs about self and the balance ofconfidence or doubt depend, in part, on the behaviors of all members of thefamily. To investigate therelationship of family identifications in female anxiety and fear related tohealth behaviors. To examine the impact offamily identifications in women with specific fears which are raised from bodilysensations. A community sample of 101women (mean age 20.81 years, SD = 0.91 ranged 20-25) participated to thepresent study. The girls completed a) the Symptom Check-List Revised (SCL-90) b)the Cardiac Anxiety Questionnaire (CAQ) c) the Fear of Pain and b)questionnaire concerning socio-demographic information and questions for familyidentifications. Themajority of women reported that they matched to the father in terms ofidentifications (47.1%). Age and birth order were not contributed on familyidentifications (F (5)= 2.188, p=.062 and F(3)=1.244, p=.299 respectively). Multivariate analysis by using ANOVA found statistical significant associationsbetween family nature identifications and fear of pain, while the most stronglyadvocacy to a family member was correlated with heart focused anxiety. Theresults are summarized in table 1. On the whole our resultshighlighted the role of family identifications and increasing female fear andavoidance behaviors. Table 1. Impact of family identifications on female Cardiac Anxiety and Fear Bodily Pain. Variables Nature identifications Character identifications Most strongly advocacy to a family member Fear CAQ .323 .901 .543 Avoidance CAQ .972 .804 .045* Attention CAQ .367 .948 .008** Total CAQ .452 .938 .044* Minor Fear of Pain .038* .871 .161 Severe Fear of Pain .318 .610 .385 Medical Fear of Pain .007** .909 .349 Total FPQ .026* .944 .200