Pain disability among older adults with arthritis

The principal objective was to examine pain disability (the degree to which chronic pain interferes with daily activities) among older adults with arthritis. Specifically, answers to two research questions were sought: (a) Does psychological distress reliably predict pain disability; and (b) do certain theoretically important host, sociodemographic, and health-related factors reliably predict pain disability?

Descriptive, univariate, and multivariate regression analyses were employed to assess key psychosocial, disease, and host factors among the sample (N = 141) of adults with arthritis, aged greater than or equal 50 years old.

The resultant regression model accounted for 63.7% (60.0% adjusted) of the variance and was significant at p < .01. Psychological distress, overall health, disease activity, and disease self-efficacy were found to predict pain disability.

Sample members with greater pain disability experienced heightened psychological distress, poorer perceptions of their overall health, more surgeries, higher unemployment, more intense disease activity, longer disease duration, and lower disease self-efficacy.