Psychological Approaches to Understanding and Treating Disease-Related Pain

Abstract

Psychologists are increasingly involved in the assessment and treatment of disease-related pain such as pain secondary to arthritis or cancer. This review is divided into four sections. In the first section, we provide a conceptual background on this area that discusses the limitations of the biomedical model of disease-related pain and traces the evolution of psychosocial theories of pain. In the second section, we discuss special issues and challenges involved in working with persons having disease-related pain, including the reluctance of some persons to report pain and to become involved in psychological treatments for pain. Section three provides an overview of psychosocial research conducted on arthritis pain and cancer pain that addresses both psychosocial factors related to pain and psychosocial interventions for pain management. In the final section, we describe important future directions, including strategies for disseminating psychosocial treatments and disparities in pain management.

Preoperative Pain Catastrophizing Predicts Pain Outcome after Knee Arthroplasty

“…Pain catastrophizing is a concept that has substantial support [6,9,25,27]. Our study appears to add to this literature by estimating the magnitude of effect of pain catastrophizing on 6-month pain and function outcomes.…”

“…Psychometric properties of the PCS have been studied extensively in various disorders and are reliable (eg, Chronbach's alpha C .75) and valid (eg, correlated with pain severity and interference measures) [6,44,52]. In addition, interventions designed to reduce pain catastrophizing are effective for various disorders characterized by chronic pain, including arthritis [25,27]. The PCS is a 13-item scale with scores ranging from 0 (no catastrophizing) to 52 (severe catastrophizing).…”

Factors associated with the Pain Catastrophizing Scale and validation in a sample of the Turkish population

“…Studies carried out over the last 30 years reveal that psychological stress has a considerable impact on pain (8)(9)(10)(11)(12). Pain catastrophizing consists of negative pain cognition induced by a response to the pain experience (4).…”

Interventional pain medicine: retreat from the biopsychosocial model of pain

“…Psychological factors are critically important for understanding all dimensions of pain morbidity including pain severity, pain-related interference with daily activities, emotional adjustment to living with persistent pain, and healthcare utilization for pain complaints [84,85]. In addition, psychological factors can predict the onset of pain in previously healthy individuals [86,87], the development of chronic pain following acute injury [88], and the maintenance of chronic pain in patients with a history of persistent pain [89,90].…”