ArticleResearch in psychotherapy (Milano)2026
Psychological adaptation and health-related quality of life in inflammatory bowel disease: a 5-year follow-up study.
Article in Research in psychotherapy (Milano), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), encompassing Crohn's disease (CD) and ulcerative colitis (UC), is a chronic immune-mediated gastrointestinal condition in which long-term care increasingly involves patient-reported health, emotional functioning, and psychological adaptation. Because psychological adaptation may not parallel clinical remission, this 5-year longitudinal study examined changes in psychopathological symptoms, alexithymia, coping strategies, and health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) in 73 outpatients receiving maintenance medical treatment. We expected no uniform mean-level improvement or deterioration and hypothesised that increases in depressive and anxiety symptoms, alexithymia, and avoidance coping would be associated with poorer HR-QoL outcomes and that increases in positive attitude coping would be associated with better outcomes. Participants were reassessed during clinical remission using validated measures, and psychological changes were analysed in relation to follow-up quality of life outcomes, adjusting for baseline levels and disease duration. Mean-level changes were limited across depressive symptoms, overall anxiety, alexithymia, most coping dimensions, and HR-QoL indices. Somatic anxiety increased over time (p=.03), whereas social support coping decreased consistently in the overall sample and within both diagnostic subgroups (p<.01). Increases in depressive symptoms were associated with poorer mental health and lower disease-specific HR-QoL (both p<.001), while increases in alexithymia were associated only with poorer disease-specific HR-QoL (p<.05). In the multivariate model, depressive change independently predicted follow-up physical health (p=.02), mental health (p<.001), and disease-specific HR-QoL (p<.001). These findings suggest that psychological vulnerability may remain clinically relevant even during remission and identify depressive symptoms as a key correlate of long-term patient-reported functioning. The results support the integration of psychological assessment and multidisciplinary care within routine gastroenterological follow-up and highlight the potential value of psychologically informed interventions aimed at preserving HR-QoL and long-term adaptation.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.