Chronic Pain and Depression

I almost want to put this one in my Duh File, where I put studies that cause a reaction from me like “Geez, no kidding!” But, I guess it has its merit. It’s just that the connection is so glaringly obvious to me and likely to the millions of people who live with chronic pain.

When you have chronic pain, how it’s managed, how it affects your life, and how you see it affects how you feel mentally and emotionally. If you see your pain as unchanging, as unbeatable, you may tend to give in to it, believing that you have no control over your pain. Pain can affect your quality of life. It can keep you from going out and socializing. It can keep you from doing your favorite activities and hobbies. Pain can also keep you from sleeping so you become sleep-deprived and fatigued. You may not be able to prepare meals, so you may go hungry. You may not be able to care for yourself, so you may be unbathed – and so on.

So, given all these ways pain can affect a person, it’s no wonder that this can lead to depression and doctors have noticed that connection a long time ago. Not only are pain and depression two of the most common problems seen by doctors, the can occur at the same time, or co-occur, in 30 to 50% of cases.

The Journal of the American Medical Association just published an article about a study that looked at the self-management of pain and use of antidepressant. In the study, 123 patients were randomly assigned to receive 12 weeks of treatment for depression and then 6 sessions (over 12 weeks) that helped them learn a self-management program for pain. This program involved learning how to perform coping and distraction techniques, and do muscle relaxation and deep breathing exercises. They were then followed with more therapy for 6 months. A second group of 127 patients received what is called “usual care,” what their doctors would routinely prescribe for people in their situation.

What the researchers found was that the patients in the first group were two to three times more likely to say their depression had eased than those patients who received the usual care. Even better, they had a four times higher rate of seeing their depression disappear within a year and their pain was lessened too than the other group.

Perhaps with numbers showing this type of improvement, more doctors will become aware of the connection and approach management in a wider fashion.

~~~~

Image: iStock.com