Associations of Pain Intensity and Frequency With Loneliness, Hostility, and Social Functioning: Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal, and Within-Person Relationships.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: The current studies investigated associations between pain intensity and pain frequency with loneliness, hostility, and social functioning using cross-sectional, longitudinal, and within-person data from community-dwelling adults with varying levels of pain. METHOD: Secondary analysis of preexisting data was conducted. Study 1 investigated cross-sectional (baseline data n = 741) and longitudinal (follow-up data n = 549, observed range between baseline and follow-up 6-53 months) associations. Study 2 tested within-person associations using daily diaries across 30 days from a subset of the participants in Study 1 (n = 69). RESULTS: Cross-sectionally, pain intensity and frequency were associated with higher loneliness (ßintensity = 0.16, ßfrequency = 0.17) and worse social functioning (ßintensity = - 0.40, ßfrequency = - 0.34). Intensity was also associated with higher hostility (ß = 0.11). Longitudinally, pain intensity at baseline predicted hostility (ß = 0.19) and social functioning (ß = - 0.20) at follow-up, whereas pain frequency only predicted social functioning (ß = - 0.21). Within people, participants reported higher hostility (γ = 0.002) and worse social functioning (γ = - 0.013) on days with higher pain, and a significant average pain by daily pain interaction was found for loneliness. Pain intensity did not predict social well-being variables on the following day. CONCLUSION: Pain intensity and frequency were associated with social well-being, although the effects were dependent on the social well-being outcome and the time course being examined.