Abstract
Background In recent years, a growing number of researchers showed significant interest in psychological and social interventions to manage chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) pain. Cognitive and emotional empathy is an attractive and valuable sociopsychological factor that may provide protection and resilience against chronic MSK pain. However, its effect on outpatients remains underexplored. Objective To compare the empathy ability between chronic MSK pain outpatients and healthy controls and explore the relationship between cognitive/emotional empathy and chronic pain. Methods Patients with chronic MSK pain (n = 22) and healthy controls (n = 26) completed the pain assessment and empathy ability task, utilizing a multidimensional empathy assessment tool with satisfactory reliability and validity (i.e., the Chinese version of the Multifaceted Empathy Test (MET-C)). Results The data indicated that the chronic MSK pain outpatients had impaired cognitive empathy (i.e., lower squared cognitive empathy accuracy: Student's t = −2.119, P = 0.040, and longer task completion time: Student's t = 3.382, P = 0.002) compared to healthy controls, and cognitive empathy was negatively correlated with pain intensity (r = −0.614, P = 0.002). Further, the impaired cognitive empathy was present in identifying positive, but not negative emotions. Conclusion These results indicate that chronic MSK pain is associated with impaired empathy ability. Our studies contribute to offering a potential direction for developing psychosocial interventions to treat chronic MSK pain.
Highlights
Chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) pain is the main contributor to disability worldwide [1]
There were no significant differences between the chronic MSK pain and healthy controls (HCs) groups in age (P = 0:128), education level (P = 0:102), gender (P = 0:532), or handedness (P = 0:272), based on independent-samples t-tests and chi-square tests
The Shapiro–Francia test showed that the mean cognitive empathy accuracy (HC group: P = 0:033; chronic MSK pain group: P = 0:005) and accuracy in positive (HC group: P = 0:084; chronic MSK pain group: P = 0:202) and negative (HC group: P = 0:400; chronic MSK pain group: P = 0:008) emotion conditions had nonnormal distributions, while the squared mean cognitive empathy accuracy (HC group: P = 0:258; chronic MSK pain group: P = 0:068) and squared mean accuracy in positive (HC group: P = 0:448; chronic MSK pain group: P = 0:678) and negative (HC group: P = 0:738; chronic MSK pain group: P = 0:153) emotion conditions had normal distributions
Summary
Chronic musculoskeletal (MSK) pain is the main contributor to disability worldwide [1]. Chronic MSK pain is often accompanied by mental health problems, such as depression, anxiety, emotional regulation problems, and sleep disorders, as well as impaired cognitive function (e.g., decreased inhibitory control, memory and, in particular, emotion-related ability), which might impair social function [6, 7]. This social dysfunction and the accumulating chronic pain itself would alter neural circuits involved in cognitive and emotional control, exacerbating the chronic pain or causing a transition to severe neuropathic pain [8, 9]. Our studies contribute to offering a potential direction for developing psychosocial interventions to treat chronic MSK pain
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