• Shuyang Liu, Xin Zhang, Beibei You, Guifang Jiang, Hong Chen, and Todd Jackson.
• From the Key Laboratory of Cognition & Personality, Southwest University, Chongqing, China.
• Pain Manag Nurs. 2024 Feb 1; 25 (1): 4104-10.

BackgroundAlthough past studies have found significant positive correlations of both pain severity and overall pain catastrophizing (PC) levels with depression in chronic pain samples, less is known about the extent to which specific PC dimensions (i.e., helplessness, magnification, rumination) explain links between pain severity and depression.AimThis study assessed the relative importance of PC dimensions as mediators of relations between chronic pain severity and depression.DesignA cross sectional study design was employed.MethodMainland Chinese adults with chronic pain (n = 983) completed validated questionnaire measures of PC, depression, and chronic pain severity within a cross-sectional research design.ResultsAnalyses indicated helplessness mediated the association between pain severity and depression while magnification partially mediated the association of helplessness with depression. Conversely, rumination did not make a significant contribution in the mediation model.ConclusionsThe helplessness dimension of PC, in particular, may help to explain why people with more severe chronic pain are prone to co-occurring depression.Copyright © 2023 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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