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Showing posts from October, 2017

The IBD Personality

Let me tell you about the IBD personality.  The antiquated and debunked theory that, due to certain personality structures or tendencies, a person will develop a destructive disease of the digestive system. Surely we must go WAY back in the medical literature to find people who write about this! I first learned about the IBD personality during my dissertation.  My project was the first study evaluating disease-related stigmatization in IBD patients.  You can read the publication here but the entire dissertation is about 150 pages long and who has time for that?  Let's just say you have to do a thorough  literature review for a dissertation.  In that review, I came across research, published  research, on the IBD personality. I was floored.  Really, people of the 1940s? I have encountered few calm, phlegmatic persons with this disease. Many of them were emotional, sensitive, rather excitable people.  -  Dr. Bockus, 1945 Then again, compared to other prevailing medical theo