Exploring Adolescents' Understanding, Experiences and Beliefs About Pain: A Qualitative Study

Pain is prevalent across the lifespan and contributes to significant societal and economic burdens. The public often holds misconceptions about pain and pain management. Despite this, there are no well-resourced public health initiatives delivering information about pain and pain management to the public. Adolescence is an opportune time to educate the public about pain. Health interventions designed for adolescents should reflect their understanding, beliefs and experiences; however, no studies explore this in non-clinical populations of adolescents. We aimed to explore adolescents' understanding, experiences and beliefs about pain to inform the development of a school-based pain education module.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with 25 adolescents in grades 7-10 (ages 11-16) attending Australian secondary schools. Interviews were conducted on video-conferencing software, audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using Framework Analysis.

We generated three themes: (i) physical and psychological pain are distinct, (ii) psychological and contextual factors influence how someone feels or reacts to physical pain and (iii) physical pain matters if it impacts participation in meaningful activities.

Adolescents' understanding and beliefs about pain do not always align with current scientific understanding of pain. School-based pain education programmes should target these areas of misalignment. Addressing adolescents' misconceptions about pain through pain education could also create a more supportive school environment for adolescents experiencing pain. Interactive approaches to learning, such as discussions that encourage adolescents to reflect on their experiences of pain, could be a promising avenue for pain education.

Two co-authors are part of the study population and contributed to the study design and analysis. Their input ensured the interview guide was appropriate for the target population and provided an adolescent perspective on the findings. They were remunerated for their time in accordance with consumer involvement guidelines.