The Correlation of Health Related Quality of life with Psychological Distress, Social Support and Cognitive Coping in Chronic Pain Patients

Abstract

The present study examines the correlation of psychological distress, social support and catastrophizing with health-related quality of life (HRQoL) in chronic pain patients. The hypotheses were: (i) psychological distress would be negatively correlated with HRQoL; (ii) social support would be positively correlated with HRQoL; (iii) catastrophizing would mediate the relationship between psychological distress and HRQoL;                    (iv) catastrophizing would mediate the relationship between social support and HRQoL. The scales were first translated using back-translation method.  Then they were administered to 62 chronic pain patients from various hospitals in Kuala Lumpur: Selayang Hospital, Kuala Lumpur Hospital, University Malaya Medical Centre and IIUM Clinic. Pearson product correlations and multiple regression were employed for data analysis.  The findings revealed that depression correlated negatively and significantly with mental component score of HRQoL. However, depression did not correlate negatively with physical component score of HRQoL. On the other hand, social support did not correlate significantly with both scores of HRQoL, mental component score and physical component score. The study also investigated mediating effect of catastrophizing. The finding showed that there was no mediating effect of catastrophizing in the relationship between perceived social support and HRQoL, and there was no mediating effect of catastrophizing in the relationship between depression and HRQoL. Implications and limitations of the study were discussed.

Keywords: health-related quality of life, psychological distress, depression, social support, cognitive coping, catastrophizing, and chronic pain