Dornsife Center for Self-Report Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
J Psychosom Res. 2020 Nov;138:110227. doi: 10.1016/j.jpsychores.2020.110227. Epub 2020 Aug 28.
Pain and affect are generally associated. However, individuals may differ in the magnitude of the coupling between pain and affect, which may have important implications for their mental health. The present study uses ecological momentary assessments (EMA) to examine individual differences in momentary pain-affect coupling and their associations with depressive and anxiety symptoms.
This study is a secondary data analysis of three primary EMA studies. Participants were a total of 290 patients with chronic pain. Results were synthesized across studies using meta-analytic techniques.
Individuals whose pain was more strongly concurrently coupled with affect (positively associated with negative affect or negatively associated with positive affect) reported higher levels of depressive and anxiety symptoms. Results from lagged analyses suggest that individual differences in affect reactivity to pain were not significantly associated with depressive or anxiety symptoms.
These findings suggest that individuals with greater concurrent coupling between pain and affect experience more mental health problems. Potential avenues for future research include intervention strategies that target the decoupling of pain and affect experiences in patients with chronic pain.
疼痛和情感通常是相关的。然而，个体在疼痛和情感之间的耦合程度上可能存在差异，这可能对他们的心理健康有重要影响。本研究使用生态瞬时评估（EMA）来研究瞬时疼痛情感耦合的个体差异及其与抑郁和焦虑症状的关系。
本研究是对三项主要 EMA 研究的二次数据分析。参与者共有 290 名慢性疼痛患者。使用元分析技术综合了研究结果。
疼痛与情感（与负性情感正相关或与正性情感负相关）同步耦合程度更高的个体报告了更高水平的抑郁和焦虑症状。滞后分析的结果表明，对疼痛的情感反应的个体差异与抑郁或焦虑症状没有显著关联。
这些发现表明，疼痛和情感之间存在更大同步耦合的个体经历更多的心理健康问题。未来研究的潜在途径包括针对慢性疼痛患者疼痛和情感体验解耦的干预策略。
