[Prevalence of mental disorders in multimodal therapy of chronic back pain]

Because of its biopsychosocial factors chronic back pain is often resistant to unimodal therapy regimes. Multimodal pain programs are a promising therapy option in the management of chronic pain as they focus on functional restoration. The aim of the study was to evaluate the prevalence of psychopathology in patients with chronic back pain. The study included 127 patients suffering from chronic back pain in multimodal inpatient pain therapy who were assessed by a psychologist. A retrospective analysis was performed focusing on the psychological diagnoses. Further factors investigated were age, gender, numeric rating scale (NRS) pain intensity at the beginning and end of the program, hospital anxiety and depression scale (HADS), further psychological treatment recommendations and migration background. Fisher's exact test was performed to calculate the significance in the different subgroups. The results showed that there was a high prevalence of depression, anxiety disorders and adjustment disorders in patients with chronic back pain. In this cohort the prevalence of depression and anxiety disorders was significantly higher than the estimated prevalence of the normal German population.