Scholars Archive

Title

Concordance of Illness Representations: The Key to Improving Care of Medically Unexplained Symptoms

Authors

Lisa M. McAndrew, University at Albany, State University of New YorkFollow
Myrna L. Friedlander, University at Albany, State University of New York
L. Alison Phillips, Iowa State University
Susan L. Santos
Drew A. Helmer

Author ORCID Identifier

Lisa M. McAndrew: 0000-0002-1350-8773

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

DOI

10.1016/j.jpsychores.2018.05.015

Abstract

How can effective patient-provider relationships be developed when the underlying cause of the health condition is not well understood and becomes a point of controversy between patient and provider? This problem underlies the difficulty in treating medically unexplained symptoms and syndromes (MUS; e.g., fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome), which primary care providers consider to be among the most difficult conditions to treat.¹ This difficulty extends to the patient-provider relationship which is characterized by discord over MUS.¹ In this article, we argue that the key to improving the patient provider relationship is for the patient and provider to develop congruent illness perceptions about MUS.

Comments

Publisher Acknowledgment:

This article is a pre-print of an accepted editorial in Journal of Psychosomatic Research @2018. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0

The version of record can be found here: Lisa M. McAndrew, Myrna L. Friedlander, L. Alison Phillips, Susan L. Santos, Drew A. Helmer, Concordance of illness perceptions: The key to improving care of medically unexplained symptoms, Journal of Psychosomatic Research, Volume 111, 2018, Pages 140-142. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2018.05.015

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Recommended Citation

McAndrew, Lisa M.; Friedlander, Myrna L.; Phillips, L. Alison; Santos, Susan L.; and Helmer, Drew A., "Concordance of Illness Representations: The Key to Improving Care of Medically Unexplained Symptoms" (2018). Educational & Counseling Psychology Faculty Scholarship. 17.
https://scholarsarchive.library.albany.edu/edpsych_fac_scholar/17