Pain Behavior, Spouse Responsiveness, and Marital Satisfaction in Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Abstract

Although the pain behavior of some diagnostic groups has been shown to be reactive to social influences, the reactivity of pain behavior in a rheumatoid artritis (RA) population remains an open question. The authors in this article combined laboratory and self-report assessment techniques to examine the extent to which the pain report and behavior of 52 RA patients was susceptible to influence of social factors within the marital unit. The authors' findings suggest that (a) different types of spouse responsiveness (e.g., solicitous, punishing) may be viewed differently by the RA population than more general chronic pain populations; (b) the patient's perception of spouse responsiveness is a significant predictor of the pain behavior, whereas the spouse's perception of these same behaviors is not; and (c) the patient's perception of the spouse's responsive behavior adds significantly to the prediction of pain behavior over a model based on "disease impact" variables alone.