Predictive relationships between chronic pain and negative emotions: a 4-month daily process study using Therapeutic...

This article examines temporal relationships between negative emotions and pain in a cohort of 33 patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain enrolled in a telephone-based relapse prevention program (Therapeutic Interactive Voice Response [TIVR]), after 11 weeks of group cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). Patients were asked to make daily reports to the TIVR system for 4 months after CBT. Patients' daily reports were analyzed with path analysis to examine temporal relationships between 3 emotion variables (anger, sadness, and stress) and 2 pain variables (pain and pain control). As expected, same-day correlations were significant between emotion variables and both pain and pain control. The lagged associations revealed unidirectional relationships between pain and next-day emotions: increased pain predicted higher reports of sadness the following day (P < .05). Conversely, increased pain control predicted decreased sadness and anger the following day (P < .05). Unlike some previous studies, this study did not reveal that an increase of negative emotions predicted increased next-day pain. We speculate that CBT treatment followed by the relapse prevention program teaches patients how to modulate negative emotions such that they no longer have a negative impact on next-day pain perception. The clinical implications of our findings are discussed.