Pain Intensity and Pain Catastrophizing Among Patients with Chronic Pain: The Mediating Effect of Self-Efficacy

This study aimed to explore the mediating role of sense of self-efficacy in the relationship between pain intensity and pain catastrophizing among chronic pain patients.

A questionnaire survey was administered to patients with chronic pain at the pain intervention departments of three tertiary hospitals in Shaanxi Province between July 2023 and July 2024. The visual analogue scale, chronic pain self-efficacy scale, and pain catastrophizing scale were used to assess the patients' pain intensity, self-efficacy, and pain catastrophizing degree, respectively. SPSS 27.0 and Mplus 8.3 software were used for statistical analysis.

This study included a total of 430 patients with chronic pain. The average score for catastrophizing pain among participants was 22.76 (score range 0-52), which is considered moderate. Pain intensity and pain catastrophizing were significantly and positively correlated, and the findings found that chronic pain self-efficacy mediated the correlation between pain intensity and pain catastrophizing after controlling for sociodemographic and disease-related variables. In addition, chronic pain self-efficacy was found to be an important mediator, accounting for 32.5% of the total effect.

Among patients with chronic pain, chronic pain self-efficacy explains the relationship of pain intensity and pain catastrophizing. These findings imply that interventions that decrease pain intensity and increase patients' sense of self-efficacy are beneficial for improving pain catastrophizing in this population.