ABNORMAL ILLNESS ATTITUDES IN PATIENTS WITH IRRITABLE-BOWEL-SYNDROME

The Illness Attitudes Scales (IAS) and the Beck Depression Inventory ( BDI) were administered to 40 patients with irritable bowel syndrome (I BS) and these were compared with 35 patients with organic gastrointest inal (GT) disease, 37 depressed patients, and 40 healthy volunteers. T he BDI score was found to be greater in the IBS patients than in eithe r the patients with organic disease or healthy subjects. All the patie nt groups had abnormal IAS scores compared with the healthy group, but these were most marked among the IBS patients with elevated scores on six out of the eight subscales. Three of these were specific to the I BS patients: bodily preoccupation, hypochondriacal beliefs and disease phobia. The results of this study indicate that clinical IBS is assoc iated with abnormal illness attitudes which are not simply a reflectio n of either an associated depression or of experiencing physical sympt oms.