Comparison of Depression and Spiritual Well-being in Chronic Pain Patients and Healthy Control Group

The results of some recent studies suggest that spiritual well-being is related to physical health of individuals. The purpose of this study was to compare depression and spiritual well-being in patients with chronic pain and healthy people.

This is a cross-sectional descriptive-analytical study. The target population in this study included the patients with chronic pain and healthy individuals in Shiraz in the period 2017-2018. The total number of participants was 600, 300 with chronic pain and 300 healthy individuals, who were selected using available sampling and cluster sampling methods, respectively. The participants completed the Spiritual Well-being Questionnaire of Paloutzian and Ellison was and the Patient Health Questionnaire. Descriptive statistics were used to describe demographic variables. To compare demographic characteristics, t-test and chi-square were used. Also, to compare the symptoms of depression and spiritual well-being in the patients with chronic pain and healthy participants, t-test was used. In this study, all the ethical considerations have been observed and the authors reported no conflict of interest.

No significant differences were found between the healthy participants and the chronic pain patients regarding demographic variables. Based on the results of t-test, depression was significantly higher in patients with chronic pain (9.97±6.30) compared to the healthy group (8.67±5.09) (P<0.006). Also, the results of t-test showed that spiritual well-being (73.78±12.10) was significantly lower in the patients with chronic pain than the healthy participants (87.14±15.03) (P<0.000).

According to the results, people with chronic pain had lower levels of spiritual well-being and higher levels of depression than the healthy people. Therefore, it seems that performing psycho-spiritual interventions to reduce depression and promote the level of spiritual wellbeing of the community is an important step in preventing pain or reducing the severity of pain in patients with chronic pain.