Gamsa Ann
Département de Psychologie, Université de Montréal, Case Postale 6128, Succursale A, Montreal, Que.Canada Pain Clinic, Montreal General Hospital, Montreal, Que. H3G 1A4 Canada.
Pain. 1990 Aug;42(2):183-195. doi: 10.1016/0304-3959(90)91161-B.
The present study examined the relationship between psychological factors and pain in order to assess the contribution of emotional disturbance to the perpetuation of pain. A group of 163 chronic pain suffers in multiple settings was compared with 81 control subjects on measures of personal history antecedent to pain onset, as well as on measures of current emotional disturbance. In addition, these psychological variables were examined for their associations with subjectively rated pain intensity. Overall, pain was found to be related to more current depression and less current life satisfaction, but was not associated with most of the personal history variables examined. These results suggests that emotional disturbance in pain patients is more likely to be a consequence than a cause of chronic pain. The dangers of routinely ascribing intractable pain to psychological causation are discussed in the light of these findings.
本研究探讨了心理因素与疼痛之间的关系，以评估情绪障碍对疼痛持续存在的影响。将一组163名来自多种环境的慢性疼痛患者与81名对照受试者在疼痛发作前的个人史指标以及当前情绪障碍指标方面进行了比较。此外，还研究了这些心理变量与主观评定的疼痛强度之间的关联。总体而言，发现疼痛与当前更多的抑郁和更低的生活满意度相关，但与所检查的大多数个人史变量无关。这些结果表明，疼痛患者的情绪障碍更可能是慢性疼痛的结果而非原因。根据这些发现，讨论了将顽固性疼痛常规归因于心理原因的危险性。
