Significance of pain in psychiatric hospital patients

Abstract

Data were recorded in respect to the complaint of pain by 227 psychiatric hospital admissions; 86 (38%) had pain, 44 (19%) mentioned it spontaneously and 49 (22%) had no relevant physical cause. Women were affected more often than men and tended to complain more often of severe pain. Severe pain was more often reported spontaneously; the longer pain lasted the more likely the patient was to report it spontaneously. Men more often had a relevant physical diagnosis and the low back was their commonest site of pain. Pain was relatively often associated with diagnoses of anxiety and personality disorder and relatively infrequently with schizophrenia, organic brain syndromes and transient situational disturbances. While there is a strong association between pain and psychiatric illness, this is less prominent in some of the more severe psychiatric disturbances.