Assessment of emotional functioning in pain treatment outcome research Robert D. Kerns, Ph.D. VA Connecticut Healthcare System Yale University Running head: Emotional functioning Correspondence: Robert D. Kerns, Ph.D., Psychology Service (116B), VA Connecticut Healthcare System, 950 Campbell Avenue, West Haven, CT 06516; Phone: 203-937- 3841; Fax: 203-937-4951; Electronic mail:
[email protected] Emotional Functioning 2 Assessment of Emotional Functioning in Pain Treatment Outcome Research The measurement of emotional functioning as an important outcome in empirical examinations of pain treatment efficacy and effectiveness has not yet been generally adopted in the field. This observation is puzzling given the large and ever expanding empirical literature on the relationship between the experience of pain and negative mood, symptoms of affective distress, and frank psychiatric disorder. For example, Turk (1996), despite noting the high prevalence of psychiatric disorder, particularly depression, among patients referred to multidisciplinary pain clinics, failed to list the assessment of mood or symptoms of affective distress as one of the commonly cited criteria for evaluating pain outcomes from these programs. In a more recent review, Turk (2002) also failed to identify emotional distress as a key index of clinical effectiveness of chronic pain treatment. A casual review of the published outcome research in the past several years fails to identify the inclusion of measures of emotional distress in most studies of pain treatment outcome, other than those designed to evaluate the efficacy of psychological interventions. In a recent edited volume, The Handbook of Pain Assessment (Turk & Melzack, 2001), several contributors specifically encouraged inclusion of measures of psychological distress in the assessment of pain treatment effects (Bradley & McKendree-Smith, 2001; Dworkin, Nagasako, Hetzel, & Farrar, 2001; Okifuji & Turk, 2001).