Abstract

Pain can be improved by the adoption and maintenance of physical activity (PA) but whether PA per se causes reductions in pain is uncertain. Pain is often greater in those with elevated symptoms of psychiatric disorders, including anxiety, mood and somatoform disorders. It is plausible that the severity of psychiatric symptoms mediates relationships between PA and pain as PA often reduces these symptoms. PURPOSE: To assess relationships among PA, pain and psychiatric symptoms known to increase the risk of pain. METHODS: College-aged women (N=1033; 19.7 ± 2.9 years) completed the 7-Day PA Recall and indicated if they had (11.4%), or had not, been experiencing pain for more than a month. The Psychiatric Diagnostic Screening Questionnaire assessed symptoms of somatization, panic, generalized anxiety (GAD) and major depressive (MDD) disorders, which were hypothesized as possible mediators of the relationship between PA and pain. Structural equation models were tested using robust maximum likelihood and Bayes estimation in Mplus 8.0. RESULTS: The hypothesized causal model had good fit (Χ2 (10) = 14.75, P = 0.141, CFI=0.996, SRMR=0.018, RMSEA= 0.021) and accounted for a significant (P=0.004) amount of variance (R2, SE) in pain (5.3%, 1.9%). Direct paths (β, SE) from PA to: MDD (-0.163, 0.045), GAD (-0.175, 0.049), panic (-0.100, 0.046), and somatization (-0.175, 0.049) were significant (P-values ≤ 0.028). The path from PA to pain was not direct (P=0.770), but indirect (P-values ≤ 0.016) and through significant paths (P-values ≤ 0.005) to pain from panic (0.130, 0.046) and somatization (0.156, 0.044). There were no direct or indirect effects from pain to PA in a reciprocal causal model. CONCLUSION: The findings support that, among college-aged women, PA is associated with pain indirectly through its associations with symptoms of somatization and panic disorder.

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