Description
Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) is a chronic musculoskeletal pain disorder, characterized by symptoms of fatigue, stiffness, depression, and diminished physical functioning. These symptoms may increase feelings of helplessness and mood disturbance, and decrease levels of self-efficacy and health status. All of these effects may be exacerbated by the effects of depression. The present study was designed to examine whether depressed FMS patients benefitted more from an intervention study than did those who were not depressed. It was hypothesized that depressed participants would manifest significantly greater improvements from baseline to post-assessment on all measures than would non- depressed participants. There were 322 participants with a physician’s diagnosis of FMS. Participants completed a battery of questionnaires at the baseline and post-intervention. The dependent variables were helplessness, mood, self-efficacy, and health status, as measured by the Arthritis Helplessness Index, the Profile of Mood States, the Arthritis Self-Efficacy Scale, and the Fibromyalgia Impact Questionnaire. Depression levels were measured by the Center for Epidemiologic Studies-Depression Scale. A two (depression: depressed, non-depressed) by two (time: baseline, post-assessment) repeated measures mixed model multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was conducted to examine differences in helplessness, mood, self-efficacy, and health status in depressed and non depressed participants from baseline to post-assessment. The results indicated overall significance for the model (p < .001). Main effects for depression indicated that depressed participants had significantly poorer helplessness levels, lower self-efficacy, worse health status, and greater mood disturbances than non-depressed participants. Significant main effects for time indicated that participants’ scores for each measure significantly improved from the baseline to post-assessment. Significant interactions indicated that depressed participants’ scores improved significantly more than non-depressed participants for all measures from baseline to post-assessment. Both depressed and non-depressed participants improved significantly in self- efficacy; however, depressed participants improved more than non-depressed participants. Possible reasons for the significant improvements in mental and physical health status may be the attention participants received as part of an intervention study, or that participants’ scores simply regressed toward the mean over time. Future researchers should examine the effects of attention versus time alone on reducing symptoms of FMS.
