Is Chronic Pain Temporal Pattern Associated with Middle-Aged and Older Adults' Perceptions of their Futures?

Corinna Löckenhoff,Elizabeth Zelinski,Abby Pui Wang Yip,M. Carrington Reid,Susan Enguídanos,Gillian Fennell

doi:10.5334/hpb.34

Abstract

A psychological consequence of chronic pain may be an inappropriately limited future time perspective (FTP) for middle-aged and older adults. FTP is defined as one’s perception of time as limited or expansive. Potentially meaningful measures, like pain temporal pattern, are often ignored in the chronic pain literature. The present study uses secondary data to assess the association between pain temporal pattern and FTP, and the moderating effect of pain duration. Among 140 individuals with chronic pain, there was no significant association between pain pattern and FTP. However, both pain-related activity interference and pain duration were associated with FTP where greater interference predicted more limited FTP (b = −0.16, p = .03) and longer pain duration contributed to more expansive FTP (b = 0.001, p = .03). The temporal pattern x pain duration interaction terms were non-significant. We discuss implications, limitations, and future directions of these findings.

Highlights

It is well-established that chronic pain negatively affects physical functioning and increases mood disorder risk (Blair et al 2003; Goldenberg 2010; Thomas et al 2004; Wæhrens, Amris, & Fisher 2010)
Contrary to what authors hypothesized, this study suggests that pain temporal pattern does not influence individuals’ future time perspective (FTP)
This null association between pain temporal pattern and FTP may be an accurate representation of a non-significant relationship, or could be due to our use of suboptimal measures in a sample of participants with an array of chronic pain conditions

Summary

Introduction

It is well-established that chronic pain negatively affects physical functioning and increases mood disorder risk (Blair et al 2003; Goldenberg 2010; Thomas et al 2004; Wæhrens, Amris, & Fisher 2010). These include pain intensity (i.e., magnitude of pain, often categorized into mild, moderate, and severe; Suso-Ribera et al, 2019), interference (i.e. pain-related limitations to daily function; Barry et al 2017), sensation (e.g., burning, aching, shooting, etc.; Jensen et al 2013), location (i.e., referencing body areas where pain is experienced; Konstantinou et al 2013), duration (i.e., the amount of time individuals have experienced pain; Jess et al 2021), and so on Despite this range of available measures, pain intensity and interference are the most commonly assessed correlates of poor wellbeing and life satisfaction (e.g., Hawker et al 2011; Sánchez-Rodríguez et al 2020; Stålnacke 2011). Severe, acute, and/or unmanageable chronic pain (more closely related to constant, or variable pain) contributes to an obstruction to future planning (Agerström et al 2019; Hellström & Carlsson 1997)

Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion