Conference paper
LEVEL OF DEPRESSION, ANXIETY AND IMPAIRMENT OF SOCIAL RELATIONS WITH REGARD TO PAIN INTENSITY IN A NATURALISTIC SAMPLE OF PATIENTS AT THE OUTPATIENT CHRONIC PAIN CLINIC
Maja Rus Makovec
; Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Neli Vintar
; Faculty of Medicine, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Samo Makovec
; University Psychiatric Hospital Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia
Abstract
Background: A high rate of concurrent depression and anxiety has been identified among the patients of pain clinics. Evaluation
of own pain can appear as a perception of being negatively impacted by pain-related suffering in social relations.
Subjects and methods: A questionnaire with 228 variables was applied to 109 randomly chosen patients at outpatient pain clinic
of the Ljubljana University Clinical Centre. Following summative scores were treated as a set of dependent variables in MANOVA,
as a set of predictors in discriminant analysis: level of depression (Zung), level of anxiety (Zung), evaluation of the nature of pain
and perceptions of negatively impacted social relations. Actual pain has been self-evaluated on a visual-analogue pain scale from 0
to 10 and recorded in subgroups with a low, middle and high intensity of actual pain (criterion variable).
Results: The average age of the participants was M=52.7 years (SD 13.9), 70.9 % of them female. Participants with a high
intensity of pain were found to have the highest level of depression, the highest level of anxiety and were negatively impacted in their
social relations to the greatest extent. Only the first discriminant function was found to be significant (p<0.05). The structure matrix
showed a high correlation between anxiety level (0.88) and depression level (0.86), and a low correlation with the perception of
negatively impacted social relations (0.57).
Conclusions: The results emphasize the connection between pain intensity, anxiety, depression and interpersonal relational
issues in the context of patients with chronic pain at an outpatient pain clinic. Anxiety and mood were found to be the best predictors
for the perception of pain intensity. The results are preliminary, but significantly support the multidisciplinary collaboration of
treatment at a pain clinic with mental health professionals.
Keywords
chronic pain; anxiety; depression; impact on social relations
Hrčak ID:
271745
URI
Publication date:
19.10.2021.
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