Pain
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Chronic pain and depression often coexist, but there is still uncertainty about the nature of this relationship. Virtually all the available data are cross-sectional and therefore do not clarify the causal relationship between the two variables. In epidemiological studies, chronic pain has often been defined fairly liberally in terms of the actual duration. ⋯ Those with data on both occasions represent 76% of an initial population of 3059 persons. On logistic regression analysis depressive symptoms at year 1 significantly predicted the development of chronic musculo-skeletal pain at year 8 with an odds ratio of 2.14 for the depressed subjects compared with the non-depressed subjects. In patients in whom pain was present at baseline no socio-demographic variable alone predicted its persistence; however, male sex and white race together with 2 items of the CES-D did predict the persistence of existing pain.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)
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Two psychological processes mediating the influence of anxiety on pain have been proposed: an attributional process in which the pain-relevance of anxiety is the essential factor, and an attentional process in which the focus of attention is the essential factor. The present study investigated the influences of attentional focus, pain-irrelevant anxiety and pain-relevant anxiety in a within-subject design (n = 40). Subjects received painful electrical stimulation in each of 5 experimental conditions. ⋯ The attributional theory seems to hold for autonomic pain responses. However, these responses might as well be considered as fear responses. Whereas there is clear evidence for a role of attentional focus in the influence of anxiety on pain, the role of attributional processes remains to be demonstrated.