Abstract
Objective: Evidence in the literature suggests peculiar personality traits for fibromyalgic (FM) patients, and it has been suggested that personality characteristics may be involved in patients’ different symptomatic events and responses to treatment. The aim of the study is to investigate the personality characteristics of Italian FM patients and to explore the possibility of clustering them considering both personality traits and clinical characteristics.Design: The study used a cross-sectional methodology and involved a control group. A self-assessment procedure was used for data gathering. The study included 87 female FM patients and 83 healthy females. Patients were approached and interviewed in person during a psychiatric consultation. Healthy people were recruited from general practices with previous telephone contact.Main Outcome Measures: Participants responded to the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Temperament and Character Inventory, the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire and the Short-Form-36 Health Survey.Results: FM patients scored significantly different from healthy participants on the Harm avoidance (HA), Novelty seeking (NS) and Self-directedness (SD). Two clusters were identified: patients in Cluster1 (n = 37) had higher scores on HA and lower scores on RD, SD, and Cooperativeness and reported more serious fibromyalgia and more severe anxious–depressive symptomatology than did patients in Cluster2 (n = 46).Conclusion: This study confirms the presence of certain personality traits in the FM population. In particular, high levels of HA and low levels of SD characterize a subgroup of FM patients with more severe anxious–depressive symptomatology. According to these findings, personality assessment could be useful in the diagnostic process to tailor therapeutic interventions to the personality characteristics.
Highlights
Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic syndrome characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain, reflecting a sensitization of the central nervous system (Mease, 2005; Mease et al, 2009; Giacomelli et al, 2011; Ablin and Buskila, 2013)
All 87 patients recruited for the study were females who had been diagnosed with fibromyalgia
The findings from the present study showed a particular personality for FM patients and suggested two different clusters in terms of both personality traits and clinical characteristics, as proposed by Gonzalez et al (2015), confirming the importance of the personality assessment of FM patients (Malin and Littlejohn, 2012)
Summary
Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic syndrome characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain, reflecting a sensitization of the central nervous system (Mease, 2005; Mease et al, 2009; Giacomelli et al, 2011; Ablin and Buskila, 2013). FM can be considered the result of the intersection of biological, psychological, environmental, and social factors This diagnostic and therapeutic approach allows clinicians to appreciate the uniqueness of the individual patient in terms of both clinical characteristics and response to treatment (Sarzi-Puttini and Cazzola, 2009). Psychological factors, such as personality traits, may modulate the physiological response to stressors and, as in the case of FM, influence the cognitive processing of musculoskeletal pain (Clauw, 1995; Malin and Littlejohn, 2012). These studies have used different instruments with distinct theoretical personality frameworks, and their findings are quite heterogeneous and difficult to compare (Malin and Littlejohn, 2012)
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