The relationships among anxiety, depression, and pain in a geriatric institutionalized sample

This study sought to determine if depression and/or anxiety is uniquely related to pain after controlling for the strong association between anxiety and depression. Both depression and anxiety were assessed in an elderly institutionalized sample using: (1) research-based diagnoses based on Diagnostic and Statistical Manual-revised 3rd edition (DSM-IIIR) criteria, and (2) evaluations of one's recent affective states using the Profile of Moods States (POMS). Pain was assessed by pain intensity and number of pain complaints. A series of path models indicated that: (1) both research-based anxiety and depression share unique variance with pain, and (2) only POMS anxiety is uniquely related to pain. A path model using both measures of anxiety and depression indicated that only the anxiety measures are significantly related to pain. However, POMS anxiety sustained a significantly greater relationship with pain than did research-based anxiety.