Hypervigilance in the development of chronic pain

Funding Activity

Website
http://purl.org/au-research/grants/nhmrc/402524

Funding Status
Closed

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Funded Activity Summary

Chronic pain is a common and debilitating condition. One in five people in the Australian community have been found to experience chronic pain at any one time. Although there is no evidence of a consistent increase in rates of chronic pain, the rate of permanent disability has increased dramatically in recent decades. This has contributed to the growing cost of chronic pain. For example, back pain is the most common reason for filing workers' compensation claims and leads to loss of 101.8 million workdays annually. The annual costs of medical care for back pain alone have been estimated at $AUD50 billion in the US and $10 billion in Australia. Not only is chronic pain a considerable economic burden, it is also a considerable personal burden to patients. Pain is one of the strongest predictors of poor quality of life and has consistently been found to be associated with high rates of depression. Although there is a large body of research that investigates what factors are associated with chronic pain, there is surprisingly little research that investigates the mechanisms that cause chronicity. Theories of chronic pain suggest that psychological characteristics increase the propensity for people to develop chronic pain. Specifically, theories argue that those people who tend to be fearful of pain will over-attend to painful sensations and avoid pain-provoking activities and as a result are at risk of developing chronic pain. This study will test those theories. If it is found that over-attending to pain does predispose patients to develop chronic pain, this will have important implications for preventing the development of chronic pain. These findings could help to devise early interventions to prevent chronicity and thereby reduce the economic burden to health services and the emotional burden to patients in terms of reduced quality of life.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-01-2006

End Date: 01-01-2008

Funding Scheme: NHMRC Project Grants

Funding Amount: $244,877.00

Funder: National Health and Medical Research Council

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

Preventive Medicine

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

acute pain | chronic pain | fear avoidance | low back pain | selective attention

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