Psychological factors and self-reports of muscle pain.

Factorial analyses of subjectively felt health complaints in a population of 400 males and 74 females revealed nine orthogonal (independent) factors. One factor (Factor 4) involved pain in the neck, pain in the back, pain in arms and shoulders, and migraine. This type of complaint did not relate to anxiety and depression. The prevalence of muscle pains varied between the sexes, and the types of occupations. Shiftwork was also important. 54% of the women and 40% of the men in the total population had some forms of muscle pain, but only 8% of the women and 3% of the men felt this to be a really serious problem. Psychological factors explained only moderate amounts of variance of muscle pain when the population was taken as a whole. However, within each type of occupation, psychological factors explained a considerable amount of the variance.