• Camila Román, Patricio Cumsille, and Lydia Gómez-Pérez.
• Escuela de Psicología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile.
• Pain Med. 2021 Nov 26; 22 (11): 2542-2549.

ObjectivePain catastrophizing is an important psychological predictor of pain. Recent evidence suggests the relationship between catastrophizing and pain intensity could be bidirectional, but most studies have been conducted on chronic pain patients and using criticized statistical methods. The present study aimed to examine if the relationship between pain intensity and catastrophizing was bidirectional in the context of childbirth.MethodsA total of 504 women without chronic pain were recruited on their 32-37 gestational week. They completed measures of catastrophizing and pain intensity on the first encounter and then again at 1, 3, and 6 months postpartum. The temporal relationship between the variables was assessed using a random intercept cross-lagged panel model.ResultsThe hypothesis of reciprocal association did not receive support, as pain intensity predicted catastrophizing during the postpartum period, but catastrophizing did not show an effect over pain intensity at any moment.ConclusionsPain intensity predicting catastrophizing is consistent with previous literature, while the lack of effect of catastrophizing over pain intensity is an unexpected result, which may suggest that catastrophizing plays a different role in the postpartum period. These results highlight the importance of timely efforts for pain management during the postpartum period and contribute to the theoretical conceptualization of catastrophizing.© The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Academy of Pain Medicine. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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