Illness perceptions in patients with fibromyalgia.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Rheumatology
• Health Psychology

Background:

• Patient beliefs and perceptions significantly influence chronic disease management.
• The Revised Illness Perception Questionnaire (IPQ-R) is a key tool for assessing these perceptions.
• Validating the IPQ-R for specific language and patient groups is crucial for accurate assessment.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate the psychometric properties of the Dutch language version of the IPQ-R for Fibromyalgia (IPQ-R FM-Dlv).
• To describe the illness perceptions of patients with Fibromyalgia (FM) using the IPQ-R FM-Dlv.
• To compare illness perceptions of FM patients with those of patients suffering from chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and coronary heart disease (CHD).

Main Methods:

• 196 patients diagnosed with Fibromyalgia completed the IPQ-R FM-Dlv.
• Psychometric properties including internal consistency and domain structure were analyzed.
• Scores were compared with existing data from English versions of the IPQ-R for CFS, RA, and CHD patients.

Main Results:

• The IPQ-R FM-Dlv exhibited psychometric properties comparable to the original English IPQ-R.
• Fibromyalgia patients demonstrated a lack of illness understanding and perceived their condition as chronic with substantial negative functional consequences.
• Significant differences in 17 out of 24 domains were observed when comparing FM patients' perceptions to those of CFS, RA, and CHD patients.

Conclusions:

• The IPQ-R FM-Dlv possesses acceptable psychometric properties for assessing illness perceptions in Dutch Fibromyalgia patients.
• While generally reliable, certain aspects of the IPQ-R FM-Dlv warrant further investigation.
• Illness perceptions of Dutch FM patients, as measured by the IPQ-R FM-Dlv, are not directly comparable to those of CFS, RA, and CHD patients assessed via the English IPQ-R.