Date of Award

12-2016

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Maureen Carrigan

Second Advisor

Keri Weed

Third Advisor

Meredith Elzy

Abstract

Invalidation is defined as the perception of cognitive, affective, and behavioral responses of others that are experienced as denying, lecturing, overprotecting, not supporting, and not acknowledging with the respect to the condition of the patient (Kool, 2012). Invalidation has also been suggested to negatively impact patients’ physical health (Kool, 2012). One specific type of invalidation is illness invalidation (II), defined as attitudes of distrust, suspicion, lack of support for, or acknowledgement that a patient is suffering from an illness (Blom et al., 2011). In addition to II, illness perception (IP) is another construct that has been linked to negative physical health (Arran, Carufurd, & Simpson, 2013). IP is a process through which an individual constructs a cognitive representation of an illness and has also been shown to influence symptom severity and physical functioning (Arran et al., 2013). Although the relationships between II, IP, and physical health have been observed previously, more extensive research is needed to determine the specific mechanisms of these relationships and what other psychological factors may play a role. Previous studies indicate that coping behaviors and depressive symptoms may be factors that influence these relationships (Shen, McCreay, & Myers, 2003). The present study used a regression analysis to reveal that depression was the only significant predictor of physical functioning. The present study also used PROCESS (Hayes, 2013) to reveal that depression mediated the relationship between IP and physical functioning, but did not mediate the relationship between II and physical functioning. The present study also revealed that coping did not mediate the relationship between IP and physical functioning, nor did coping mediate the relationship between II and physical functioning. Lastly, the present study revealed that II and IP were both significantly related to depression, and IP was significantly related to II.

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