PIRES, Ana    JOYCE-MONIZ, L.. Significações de doença, confronto sintomático e adaptação em pacientes de Reumatologia e Ortopedia: Uma abordagem desenvolvimentista e dialéctica. []. , 26, 2, pp.309-326. ISSN 0870-8231.

The study of the patients’ significations, representations or beliefs about their illnesses has been a prevailing domain in Health and Illness Psychology. From a developmental perspective, these significations may be characterized in terms of levels of progressive abstratraction and complexity, and the actions to which they are associated in terms of dialectic operations of decentration and compensation. In order to illustrate a methodological orientation of this conception, the authors introduce the first results of an investigation addressed to patients of Orthopaedics and Rheumatology, about the connection of those levels and operations to a methodology of self-monitoring of the main symptom, in most cases the physical pain, and of the perceived control of that symptom.

: Illness significations; levels of significations; dialectic operations; Orthopaedics; Rheumatology; self-monitoring.

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