Chronic illness behavior in psychiatric patients: an attempt at behavioral validation

Recent literature has focused on chronic illness behavior as a final common pathway for many patients with psychosomatic disorders and learning theory has been used to explain the behaviors of these patients. The present study evaluated psychiatric patients in a variety of treatment settings using the methodology of Wooley and Blackwell (1). Blank forms were used as "do it yourself" tokens and rewarded behaviors were categorized as care-taking, sociability, achievement, communication, or other. A multivariate analysis of variance revealed that psychiatric patients did not differentially reward care-taking, as a chronic illness model would have anticipated; rather, they most frequently rewarded socialization and achievement. In addition, we found that patients without disability compensation rewarded socialization more frequently and achievement less frequently than did those patients with compensation. Treatment setting was not related to the types of behaviors that were rewarded. This study does not support a behavioral theory of chronic illness behavior in a general psychiatric population. The results are discussed with respect to the implications for psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine.