Gilmore, H. (2015). Chronic pain, activity restriction and flourishing mental health. Health Reports, 26(1): 15-22.
Studies of the past twenty years document the association between pain and depression. Recent studies are now exploring the mediation factors that may explain this relationship such as age, intensity, and activity restriction. In this study the Activity Restriction (AR) model hypothesizes that pain intensity affects mental health by limiting activities of daily living (ADLs), work, leisure, and family roles. The study uses the Mental Health Continuum-Short Form (MHC-SF) to evaluate a sample 26,420 respondents from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) that report having chronic pain. The MHC-SF consists of 14 questions that ask participants how they felt in terms of three factors: emotional, psychological, social well-being. Responses are given to one of five categories ranging “almost always” to “never”.
Using this data as well as other information from the CCHS, the study concludes that participants with higher pain intensity are less likely to be in flourishing mental health than those with lower pain intensity. Second greater pain intensity increases activity restriction. This activity restriction mediates in large part the relationship between pain and mental health. However, since age is also a mediator of pain intensity, further investigations are needed to determine whether it has more or less impact. This is especially true for the older population. Implications of this research call for an increase in occupational therapy (OT) practitioners. OT practitioners are skilled in treating those patients with chronic pain conditions to participate in desire daily activities through rehabilitation, adaptations, and/or modifications.
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