Chronic pain and self-efficacy: the effects of age, sex, and chronicity.

Higher self-efficacy (SE) is associated with lower pain ratings in chronic pain patients, although longer experience with chronic pain leads to lower SE scores. Self-efficacy in pain patients does not appear to be clearly related to sex or age, however. This study investigated the effects of gender, age, length of pain experience (chronicity) on SE and pain ratings. Archival data from the records of 187 patient's charts were evaluated for demographic information, chronicity, pain ratings and SE. Analyses found a significant inverse relationship between SE and pain ratings (r = -.22) and lower SE for young adult patients. Results support the conclusion that enhanced SE is an important psychosocial intervention in the treatment of chronic pain patients.

The pituitary-adrenal response to novel stimulation and ether stress in young adult and aged rats.

Pituitary-adrenal responsiveness to stress induced by either psychological (novelty) or physiological (ether) stimuli was examined in young (3 to 6 months) and old (24 to 27 months) male and female rats. In Experiment 1, subjects were placed in a novel environment for 3 min. Blood samples were collected at 0, 15, 30, 45, and 60 min. In Experiment 2, a blood sample was collected from experimental subjects immediately following 15 min in a novel environment; a basal sample was collected from control subjects. In Experiment 3, basal and stress blood samples were collected from subjects exposed to ether vapors. Blood samples were assayed for plasma corticosterone content. The major findings were: (1) no change with age in either sex in basal corticosterone levels or in the time course of the adrenocortical response; (2) no change with age in males in stress-induced increments in corticoids; (3) no change with age in females in corticoid elevations induced by a mild stressor (Experiment 1), but a decrement in elevations induced by more potent stressors (Experiments 2 and 3).