Related Experiment Videos
Gender differences in associations between trauma history and adjustment among chronic pain patients
Ilyse L Spertus1, John Burns, Beth Glenn
1Department of Psychology, Finch University of Health Sciences, The Chicago Medical School, 3333 Green Bay Road, North Chicago, IL 60064, USA Pain and Rehabilitation Clinic of Chicago, 640 N. LaSalle, Chicago, IL, USA Department of Psychiatry, University of Chicago, 5841 S. Maryland Avenue (MC 3077), Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Abstract:
This study examines the relationship between a trauma history and emotional functioning in response to a chronic pain condition. We broadened the traditional study of trauma in chronic pain from sexual and physical abuse to include a variety of traumatic events and experiences that occurred not only during childhood, but during adulthood as well. Seventy-three (51% female, 60% lower back) chronic pain patients were administered the Trauma History Questionnaire (Green, B.L., Trauma History Questionnaire. In B.H. Stamm (Eds.), Measurement of Stress, Trauma and Adaptation, Sidran, Lutherville, MD, 1996, pp. 366-369), the Multidimensional Pain Inventory (Kerns, R.D., Turk, D.C. and Rudy, T.E., The West Haven-Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory (WHYMPI), Pain, 23 (1985) 345-356), The Beck Depression Inventory (Beck, A.T., Ward, C.H., Mendelson, M., Mock, J. and Erbaugh, J., An inventory for measuring depression, Arch. Gen Psychiatry, 4 (1961) 561-571), and the Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale (McCracken, L.M., Zayfert, C., Gross, R.T. The Pain Anxiety Symptoms Scale: development and validation of a scale to measure fear of pain, Pain, 50 (1992) 67-73) prior to starting a multidisciplinary pain program. We hypothesized that high levels of emotional distress and anxiety would differentiate patients with a substantial history of trauma from those without, while levels of pain severity and disability would not. A MANOVA revealed a significant Trauma Group (low vs. high) by Gender interaction for the dependent variables, which included both measures of emotional distress and pain severity and disability. Univariate tests showed that the interaction was significant only for emotional distress variables and not for pain severity and disability. Further, the multivariate effect of Trauma Group and the univariate effects for emotional distress variables were significant only among men. Results indicate that a substantial history of trauma may detrimentally impact a chronic pain patient's ability to manage their pain effectively, particularly among men.