Chronic back pain and mental disorders

Abstract

Chronic back pain is a significant biomedical problem due to its high prevalence and negative impact on quality of life and socioeconomic indicators. Mental disorders play a substantial role in the genesis of chronic pain. This review discusses the issues of back pain comorbid with depressive, anxiety disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, and somatoform disorder. It also considers the features of the clinical manifestations of pain associated with mental disorders. There are data on the neurobiological relationship between pain and mental disorders and on the personality traits of patients with chronic back pain.

Keywords

• chronic pain
• back pain
• low back pain
• depression
• anxiety
• generalized anxiety disorder
• post-traumatic stress disorder
• somatoform disorder
• alexithymia
• neurobiology
• psychopharmacotherapy
• psychotherapy