Associations of Pain Intensity and Frequency With Loneliness, Hostility, and Social Functioning: Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Within-Person Relationships

Increased Social Interactions Reduce the Association Between Constricted Life-Space and Lower Daily Happiness in Older Adults With and Without HIV: A GPS and Ecological Momentary Assessment Study

“…We did not find any significant associations between daily percent of time spent at home and concurrent depression, anxiousness, or fatigue, likely due to participants reporting overall lower levels of negative mood and fatigue, with limited variability. Additionally, while increased time spent at home was not associated with lower ratings of pain across the two groups, longitudinal studies have shown significant associations between indicators of pain and social functioning 46,47 in the general population. As PWH reported higher levels of pain, future studies should investigate interactive relationships between daily percent of time spent at home and mood on multidimensional, real-time indicators of reported pain (e.g., the McGill Pain Questionnaire) rather than a single dimension assessment (pain intensity).…”

Beyond pain, distress, and disability: the importance of social outcomes in pain management research and practice

“…The experience of chronic pain is associated with withdrawal from social activity, 123 increased social isolation, 126 feelings of loneliness, 1,2,73 and the erosion of social identity. 67 These social consequences of pain can create feelings of guilt and worry which further heighten distress and impede pain self-care.…”

Bidirectional longitudinal associations between loneliness and pain, and the role of inflammation

“…12 Another community study documented cross-sectional associations between pain and loneliness, but found that baseline pain was minimally related to future loneliness. 4 The potentially bidirectional links between pain and loneliness have typically been investigated in separate studies, making it difficult to determine the relative importance of the two temporal sequences. We therefore tested associations between loneliness and future pain, and pain and future loneliness, in a single study of a nationally representative population sample involving 4,906 men and women aged 52 and older.…”

“…Another study of a community sample from Arizona found minimal associations between pain intensity or pain frequency and loneliness measured 6-53 months later. 4 Differences may relate to the definitions of pain and measures of loneliness used in these investigations, and in the selection of covariates.…”