Emotional, cognitive, and behavioral characteristics of medical outpatients: a preliminary analysis

The authors examined the relationship among emotional, cognitive, and behavioral factors in 65 new outpatients attending neurology and cardiology clinics. The patients completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Illness Perception Questionnaire, the Somatosensory Amplification Scale, the Private Body Consciousness Scale, and the Health Anxiety Questionnaire. A principal component factor analysis revealed two factors, somatosensory amplification/anxiety and depression/pessimism, that together accounted for 44% of the variance. The factors the authors identified may be useful as a basis for understanding different patterns of illness behavior. The use of these factors may help to rationalize and refine the large number of existing measures and simplify the assessment process, as well as contributing to the development of treatment interventions.