Study: 1 in 5 Adults Experience Daily Chronic Pain
Approximately 1 in 5 adults in the US experience pain every day for 3 months or longer, according to a recent study.
Researchers were inspired to conduct their study after examining a 2011 National Institute of Medicine report stating that 50% of Americans experienced chronic pain. The 2011 report defined chronic pain in a very inclusive way, as moderate or severe pain in the previous 4 weeks. It also included pain from arthritis, as well as joint pain.
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“I don’t think that half of the population is dealing with chronic pain in the sense that we would describe chronic pain as a risk factor for deteriorating mental health and substance abuse,” said Jae Kennedy, lead author of the study and professor of health policy and administration at Washington State University Spokane.
“We wanted to come up with a subset of chronic pain that focused on something that we could look at across different chronic conditions rather than saying, ‘OK, if you’ve got arthritis, then you’ve got chronic pain,’” he said.
For their study, researchers instead decided to focus on persistent pain, saying “persistent pain is going to have the biggest impact on people’s daily lives. If you’re dealing with pain constantly for a long period of time, that’s going to affect your work life, your family life, your social life. It also puts you at higher risk for things like mental illness and addiction.”
Kennedy and colleagues evaluated survey data of 35,000 households collected by The National Center for Health Statistics. The study showed that roughly 19% of adults in the United States reported persistent pain, that older adults (ages 60 to 69 years) are more likely to report persistent pain, and women had an increased risk for pain compared to men.
Overall, of the 39.4 million adults who reported pain, 67.2% called their pain constantly present, while 50.5% reported occasional “unbearable” and “excruciating” pain.
The complete study is published in the October issue of the Journal of Pain.
-Michelle Canales
Reference:
Washington State University. Researchers find nearly 1 in 5 adults have persistent pain. October 27, 2014. https://news.wsu.edu/2014/10/27/researchers-find-nearly-1-in-5-adults-have-persistent-pain/#.VFOQiF4iqf0. Accessed October 31, 2014.