Psychosocial Factors in Chronic Spinal Cord Injury Pain

Chronic pain is a problem among patients with spinal cord injuries, but the psychosocial factors associated with spinal cord injury (SCI) pain are not well understood. To understand SCI pain further, 54 patients (19 with quadriplegia and 35 with paraplegia) completed the Beck Depression Inventory, State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, Profile of Mood States, Acceptance of Disability Scale and SCI Interference Scale. Forty-two patients stated they had SCI pain and completed the Multidimensional Pain Inventory and the Pain Experience Scale. Results revealed that anger and negative cognitions were associated with greater pain severity. Patients who reported pain in response to a general prompt experienced more severe pain than patients who reported pain only when directly questioned about the presence of pain, but these different reporting groups did not differ on emotional variables. Those who were less accepting of their disability reported greater pain severity. Additionally, patients who perceived a significant other expressing punishing responses (e.g., expressing anger at the patients or ignoring the patients) to their pain behaviors reported more severe pain. Level of lesion, completeness of injury, surgical fusion and/or instrumentation and veteran status were not associated with pain severity. Finally, pain was associated with emotional distress over and above the distress associated with the SCI itself. Overall, psychosocial factors, not physiological factors, were most closely associated with the experience of pain. Multidimensional aspects of pain are used to explain these findings and suggest that treatment should be directed at the emotional and cognitive sequelae of chronic SCI pain.