The number of persons living with chronic illness in the Western world has increased over the years, much due to improvements in medical treatments (World Health Organization (WHO), 2008). Persons with chronic illness need to cope with symptoms and distress in order to maintain quality of life despite their illness. As suggested by the Common-Sense Model (CSM), accurate perceptions of illness form the cognitive basis for the person's adaptive coping responses (Cameron and Leventhal, 2003;Petrie and Weinman, 1997). Perceptions of illness are therefore related to, yet separate from, the strategies the person can use for coping with illness (Cameron and Leventhal, 2003;Leventhal et al., 1980). Coping responses, in turn, are evaluated by the person in terms of their perceived effect on the health threat. The CSM, thus, depicts a selfregulatory system: Appraisals of coping influence the choice of future coping responses, leading to the abandonment of ineffective