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. 2019 Apr;26(2):217-229.
doi: 10.1007/s12529-019-09776-5.

Associations of Pain Intensity and Frequency With Loneliness, Hostility, and Social Functioning: Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Within-Person Relationships

Ian A Boggero  1   2 , John A Sturgeon  3 , Anne Arewasikporn  4   5 , Saul A Castro  6 , Christopher D King  7   8 , Suzanne C Segerstrom  9
Affiliations

Associations of Pain Intensity and Frequency With Loneliness, Hostility, and Social Functioning: Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Within-Person Relationships

Ian A Boggero et al. Int J Behav Med. 2019 Apr.

Abstract

Background: The current studies investigated associations between pain intensity and pain frequency with loneliness, hostility, and social functioning using cross-sectional, longitudinal, and within-person data from community-dwelling adults with varying levels of pain.

Method: Secondary analysis of preexisting data was conducted. Study 1 investigated cross-sectional (baseline data: n = 741) and longitudinal (follow-up data: n = 549, observed range between baseline and follow-up: 6-53 months) associations. Study 2 tested within-person associations using daily diaries across 30 days from a subset of the participants in Study 1 (n = 69).

Results: Cross-sectionally, pain intensity and frequency were associated with higher loneliness (βintensity = 0.16, βfrequency = 0.17) and worse social functioning (βintensity = - 0.40, βfrequency = - 0.34). Intensity was also associated with higher hostility (β = 0.11). Longitudinally, pain intensity at baseline predicted hostility (β = 0.19) and social functioning (β = - 0.20) at follow-up, whereas pain frequency only predicted social functioning (β = - 0.21). Within people, participants reported higher hostility (γ = 0.002) and worse social functioning (γ = - 0.013) on days with higher pain, and a significant average pain by daily pain interaction was found for loneliness. Pain intensity did not predict social well-being variables on the following day.

Conclusion: Pain intensity and frequency were associated with social well-being, although the effects were dependent on the social well-being outcome and the time course being examined.

Keywords: Acute pain; Biopsychosocial; Community-dwelling adults; Social well-being.

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Figures

Figure 1:
Figure 1:
Interactions of Average Pain by Daily Pain Predicting Daily Loneliness
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