Volume 17, Issue 3
Behavioral Reactance: Its influence in premature interruption of treatment
Abstract
Treatment outcomes have special interest for psychological and psychiatric practice. Participant variables are related to therapists, techniques and patients. Patient related variables more frequently involved are demographic, motivation and personality. One of the patients´ variables less studied is reactance. It is defined by Brehm (1966, 1981) as the motivational state oriented to the restitution of the person's autonomous behaviors when these are threatened. Dowd, Milne and Wise (1991) developed the PAI Scale (Personal Attitude Inventory) with the purpose of measuring psychological reactance. In an earlier work, the normative data of PAI was presented (Chappa et al. 1999), and data resulted very similar to results informed by Dowd, Milne and Wise in their original work (1991). This presentation show the relation between Reactance – estimated with the Spanish PAI, assertiveness – evaluated with Rathus Scale, and the Premature Interruption of Treatment (PREM). 136 ambulatory patients who had asked for help at CETEM (Instituto de Terapias Cognitivas e Integrativas) were studied in La Plata, Argentina. Patient's ages fluctuated between 15 and 65 years old, with a media of 35.4 and a DS of 12.3. Results show a positive correlation between Psychological Verbal Reactance and Assertiveness, in the sample patients, in correspondence with the non clinical samples (Chappa et al.1999). Verbal Reactance has been indicated to be positively related to the patient's progress. Verbal opposition, in this sense, is considered beneficial (Seibel y Dowd, 1999). On the other hand, on those patients who interrupted treatment prematurely, an inverse relation is found. Within this group, the Psychological Behavioral Reactance was the most strongly related to Assertiveness. This finding can be added as additional evidence to Seibel and Dowd´s statements (1999) relating Behavioral reactance to premature interruption of treatment.
Keywords
Reactance, premature interruption of treatment