[Evaluation of stress tolerance in the neurological patients]

A purpose of the study was to develop the Stress Tolerance Scale (STS) and to assess its diagnostic efficacy in neurological clinical practice. The theoretical ground for stress tolerance measurement is the concept of personal environmental interaction as a process including phases of the subjective stress event appraisal, active reaction and subjective result appraisal. The STS encompasses the response items of the descriptions of the accomplished and unaccomplished person-environment and self-personal relations that result in stress overcoming or in stress maintenance, respectively. Within each group, the additional variants of the transactions were specified according to their space-temporal characteristics. Data sets from 112 healthy people and 247 patients (60 with chronic tension headache, 72 with chronic low back pain, 51 with myasthenia gravis, 14 with progressive muscular dystrophy, 27 with hereditary polyneuropathy and 23 with torticollis) have been analyzed. The validity and quiantitation of the STS were determined by Rasch analysis and comparison of the results with those of total STS score and subscale scores of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and Russian brief version of MMPI. All correlations were at a level of significance. A decrease of stress tolerance was found in patients with chronic pain syndromes and torticollis. The results indicate that the STS allows assessing stress tolerance and a structure of person-environment interactions used by a patient. It can be utilized for optimization of short-term psychotherapy of neurological patients.