Psychosocial assessment of patients with chronic pain

Abstract

The main object of this study is to evaluate the psychological status of chronic pain patients (CPP) and describe the characteristics and frequency of psychological disorders of CPP. Two hundred sixty-three patients with complaints of chronic pain longer than 1 year and fifty healthy volunteers were included in the study. Patients with cancer were not included. Turkish version of Symptom Checklist-90 Revised (SCL- 90-R) was used for the assessment of the psychological status of participants. CPP were divided into 5 subgroups regarding their painful regions: Headache, cervical or upper extremity pain, axial or radicular back pain, lower extremity pain, and diffuse pain. Global severity index (GSI) and subscales of SCL-90-R were analyzed. In CPP, GSI and almost all subscale scores of SCL-90-R were significantly higher than the control group. Headache patients had worse psychological symptoms than other subgroups of CPP. SCL-90-R scores of female patients were significantly higher than males. 24.7% of patients had moderate and 14.8% had severe psychological symptoms. While the intensity of the pain had a moderate correlation with increased psychological symptoms, the level of education and age had a weak negative correlation with SCL- 90-R scores. Patients with chronic pain are convenient to have phycological symptoms. While almost half of the patients have increased psychological symptoms, the degree of the symptoms can be serious in some of them. Thus, treatment of chronic pain necessitates a multidisciplinary approach.