Chronic pain among older women living alone. A study focusing on disability and morale.

• Purpose: To investigate 1)how older women who are living alone perceive chronic musculoskeletal pain,Activities of Daily Living (ADL), physical activity, affective distress,pain-related beliefs, pain management, and rate pain-related disability andmorale,  2) the relationships betweendemographic variables, ADL, physical activity, affective distress, pain-relatedbeliefs, and pain management with pain-related disability and morale.Method: The study had across-sectional and correlational design. Sixty women, living alone with chronicpain and community support aged ≥65 years were included.Results: The women were on average 81 years old and had lived with pain forabout 21.5 years. They reported low scores of affective distress,catastrophizing thoughts and self-efficacy, high scores of fear of movement,low degrees of pain-related disability, and low levels of  morale. The multiple regression analysisshowed that only catastrophizing thoughts significantlyexplained the variation in pain-related disability, and both affective distress and catastrophizing thoughtssignificantly explained the variation in morale. Conclusion: These older women livingalone with chronic pain reported similar prevalence ofchronic pain and pain-related disability but lower morale when comparingthe results with similar studies about older people in the same age group orolder people who are in need of help to manage their daily life. The only variable that was independely associated to bothpain-related disability and morale was catastrophizing. Further researchshould focus on identifying catastrophizing thougts,and also on developing a rehabilitation program based on a biopsychosocialperspective with the goal to decrease catastrophizing, pain-relateddisability, and increase morale for this target group

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Care Sciences

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