Background The Secondary Prevention in Uppsala Primary Healthcare Project (SUPRIM) was a randomized controlled trial of a group-based cognitive behavioural therapy stress management programme for patients with coronary heart disease. The project was successful in reducing the risk of fatal or non-fatal first recurrent cardiovascular events. The aim of this study was to analyse the effect of cog...

BACKGROUND Anxiety among patients after surgery can affect their physiological and psychological well-being. The aim of this study was to investigate and compare the effects of Benson's relaxation and rhythmic breathing techniques on postoperative anxiety in candidates for the mastectomy surgery. METHODS This randomized controlled clinical trial study was conducted with ninety patients in 201...

Objectives: To examine (a) affective states, proximity of competition and personality traits as predictors of anxiety direction and (b) investigate the role of personality characteristics in moderating the relationship between anxiety direction and proximity of competition and affective states. Method: A multilevel mixed idiographic/nomothetic approach. Intensity and direction of competitive an...

OBJECTIVE This study tested whether functional somatic symptoms are associated with exaggerated increases in self-reported anxiety and somatic complaints in response to stress and CO(2)-enriched air breathing, and whether this association exists in parallel to or in the absence of exaggerated physiological responses. METHODS Out of 499 young somatically healthy undergraduate women, 18 partici...

Background and purpose: The functional understanding and examination of competitive anxiety responses as temporal events that unfold as time-to-competition moves closer has emerged as a topical research area within the domains of sport psychology. However, little is known from an inclusive and interaction oriented perspective. Using the multidimensional anxiety theory as a framework, the presen...

OBJECTIVE To examine relationships among coping, stress responses, pain, somatic symptoms, and anxious/depressed symptoms in a sample of children and adolescents with recurrent abdominal pain (RAP). METHOD We assessed parents' reports of coping and involuntary responses to stress in relation to pain, somatic symptoms, and symptoms of anxiety and depression in a sample of 174 children and adol...

Trait anxiety is a personality characteristic that describes the tendency to feel anxious across a variety of situations, while state anxiety refers to the anxiety experienced in a specific situation (Cox, 2007). Previous research has suggested that high trait anxious individuals experience more situation-specific state anxiety (Horikawa & Yagi, 2012). Additionally, prior research has indicated...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of child temperament, maternal psychologic symptoms, maternal chronic pain, and parenting stress on children's somatic complaints. METHODS The study was embedded in the Generation R Study, a population-based cohort study. Child somatic complaints were assessed via mother-report in 5,171 children of 18 months of age. Questionnaires assessed maternal somatic ...

Factors such as anxiety, depression, somatic awareness, autonomic symptoms, and differences in coping strategies are known to affect dizziness handicap. We studied these factors in 63 consecutive "dizzy" patients. This sample was subgrouped into normals and patients with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, compensated and uncompensated unilateral peripheral vestibular system impairment, or ab...

Three hundred eighty-seven undergraduate students in a large-group setting were exposed to 20 min of either meditation, progressive muscle relaxation (PMR), or a control condition, followed by 1 min of stress induction and another 10 min of each intervention. Participants in the meditation and PMR groups decreased more in cognitive, somatic, and general state anxiety than controls. The PMR grou...