Chronic Pain Experience According to the Transactional Stress and Coping Model: Associations between Different Pain Measures and Health Outcomes

Abstract

According to Lazarus and Folkman's Transactional Stress and Coping Model, chronic pain is defined as a source of stress. The model emphasizes the interaction between the person and the environment and focuses on primary (pain severity and/or frequency) and secondary appraisals (pain and/or discomfort from pain) when examining the effects of a stressor on a person's life. In this study, chronic pain was defined as a type of stress and pain stress was measured in three different ways: unidimensional pain stress (primary appraisal only), multidimensional pain stress (sum of both primary and secondary appraisals), and transactional pain stress (product of both primary and secondary appraisals). The aim of the study was to examine the relationships between the three different pain stress measures and the outcome variables of pain-related disability, negative mood and daily activity level. The study was conducted with 167 individuals with different types of chronic pain. Sociodemographic Characteristics and Pain Information Form, Visual Analog Scale, West Haven Yale Multidimensional Pain Inventory and Life Changes Questionnaire were used as data collection tools. The results of the study showed that there were significant relationships between unidimensional pain stress and disability and negative mood (r(1,167) = 0.33; 0.36, respectively); multidimensional pain stress and disability and negative mood (r(1,167) = 0.51; 0.38, respectively); transactional pain stress and disability, negative mood (r(1,167) = 0.43; 0.37, respectively) and daily activity (r(1,167) = -0.24). The results indicate the significance of new measures in the assessment of pain experience.

Keywords

• chronic pain
• pain stress
• pain disability
• daily activities