Psychological assessment in chronic pain

Abstract

Assessment of psychological status in chronic pain patients is an important aspect of evaluation and treatment in pain management programs. Unfortunately, most of the psychological tests used in common practice have not been used extensively with chronic pain patients. Normative and comparative data must be generated to allow for valid and efficient psychometric assessment. The present paper is a preliminary comparison of several instruments of potential usefulness in the assessment of anxiety and depression among pain patients (N = 34). The SCL-90-R appeared to offer the best combination of relevant data and efficient assessment. However, it was noted that there were significant intercorrelations among the SCL-90-R subscales, which suggests a unitary factor structure.