Pain and mental health symptom patterns and treatment trajectories following road trauma: a registry-based cohort study

A registry-based observational cohort study examining patterns of pain and mental health symptoms and their impact on work or other activities after injury.

“…While we did not know what treatments people in this study had accessed, it may be that people with greater levels of socioeconomic disadvantage require better access to postacute care to manage their pain and mental health postinjury. Other recent studies have found that people with lower socioeconomic position have higher rates of both reporting problems (Giummarra, Simpson, et al, 2020) and receiving treatment paid for by a compensation scheme (Giummarra, Black, et al, 2018), including people who do not transition from high to low pain or mental health problems (Huang et al., 2021); however, it may be that these treatments are too late or not sufficient to prevent persistent problems.…”

“…People with neurotrauma were excluded as, although these injuries are less common, they lead to a higher prevalence of pain and mental health problems (Gabbe et al., 2017; Giummarra, Simpson, et al, 2020), and may disproportionately affected the study findings. Cases with a transport injury compensation claim were included in a substudy examining the relationship between pain and mental health transitions and treatment trajectories (Huang et al., 2021). Therefore, people whose claim with the Victorian Transport Accident Commission was managed by the Independence branch were also excluded as this claims branch is specifically for people requiring lifelong support for serious injuries.…”