Psychological distress: A study of acute post-burn patients

Abstract

A multifactorial model of post burn distress which includes an individual or intrapersonal variable and situation-specific coping strategies was proposed and tested with a sample of 44 adult general medical hospitalized subjects at New York Hospital-Cornell Medical Center's burn unit. The primary question under investigation was whether or not hypnotizability and situation specific coping strategies are associated with psychological distress in the first two weeks of hospitalization after the event of being burned. A general factor of psychological distress was indexed from the Impact of Events subscales of Avoidance and Intrusion, the Dissociative Experience Scale, and the Profiles of Mood States. Subjects' hypnotizability (induction scores from the Hypnotic Induction Profile) accounted for approximately 13% of the variance in the measure of psychological distress {dollar}(p < .05).{dollar} And, a model which incorporated both hypnotizability and behavioral disengagement coping accounted for approximately 25% of the variance in psychological distress {dollar}(p < .01).{dollar} There was a trend for the interaction to also be significant indicating the behavioral disengagement coping was more or less effective in mitigating psychological distress for those of high hypnotizability versus those of low hypnotizabality. The data suggest that assessment of both behavioral disengagement coping, and hypnotizability may lead to early identification of patients who are psychologically at high risk and who may benefit from an early psychological intervention. Consistent with previous research, the results suggest that individual differences should be taken into account in the acute, hospital stage of recovery.