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Extended report
Longitudinal association between coping and psychological distress in rheumatoid arthritis: a systematic review Johanna E Vriezekolk,1 Wim GJM van Lankveld,1 Rinie Geenen,2 Cornelia HM van den Ende1 1Department
of Rheumatology, Sint Maartenskliniek, Nijmegen, The Netherlands 2Department of Clinical and Health Psychology, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands Correspondence to Johanna E Vriezekolk, Department of Rheumatology, Sint Maartenskliniek, PO Box 9011, 6500 GM, Nijmegen, The Netherlands;
[email protected] Accepted 13 March 2011 Published Online First 7 April 2011
ABSTRACT Objective To examine the longitudinal association between coping and psychological distress in rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Methods Bibliographic databases up to July 2010 were searched for longitudinal studies with a follow-up of ≥6 months. Two reviewers assessed the methodological quality of the included studies. Study characteristics, coping strategies and coping-psychological distress associations were extracted. Coping strategies were categorised using a hierarchical taxonomy. A bestevidence synthesis determined the level of evidence for a prognostic association of coping with depression, anxiety and general distress. Results From an initial set of 2605 potentially relevant studies, 19 studies (14 cohorts) met the predefined selection criteria. In all, 10 studies were of ‘high quality’ (≥12 of 18 quality criteria). Unadjusted bivariate correlations showed that baseline approach-oriented coping correlated with lower psychological distress (r between 0.007–0.46, p values
