Most well-accepted etiological models of
facial pain (e.g.,
temporomandibular disorders and
headache) implicate emotional distress as an important factor in the development and maintenance of
pain. Data exists to support the notion that some
facial pain sufferers are more emotionally distressed than no
pain controls. However, many of these dependent measures of emotional distress are either lengthy assessment batteries, lack clear cut psychotherapeutic treatment implications, or focus exclusively on
pain related sequela. As cognitive-behavioral interventions become more integrated into the treatment of
chronic pain conditions, including various
facial pain conditions, it becomes more imperative that the tools used to assess psychological functioning provide the clinician with specific cognitive/behavioral targets for change. The purpose of this study was to assess the degree to which symptomatic treatment seeking
facial pain sufferers (N = 25), symptomatic non-treatment seeking
facial pain sufferers (N = 48), and healthy
pain-free controls (N = 70) differed on the Rational Beliefs Inventory (RBI). The RBI is a reliable, valid questionnaire assessing rational beliefs that are operationalized within a Rational Emotive
Therapy (RET) framework. RET is a cognitive-behavioral treatment paradigm that focuses on how an individual's maladaptive cognitive errors or distortions exacerbate emotional distress. Group differences were assessed using a oneway Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) with the total RBI score serving as the dependent measure, and a Multivariate Analysis of Covariance (MANCOVA) using individual RBI belief subscales as dependent measures. These results indicated that groups differed significantly on the total score and several of the individual belief subscales. These findings indicated that
facial pain sufferers generally hold maladaptive beliefs that may be of clinical significance for cognitive/behavioral treatment approaches.