Relationship of Depression, Anxiety, Stress and Kinesiobhobia with Balance Function in Individuals with different Chronic Pain Conditions Nerurkar Amruta1, Thali Hemangi2 1Associate Profesor, Dep of Physiotherapy, Pad. Dr. D. Y. Patil University, Nerul, Navi Mumbai 2Physiotherapist, Pad. Dr. D. Y. Patil University, Nerul, Navi Mumbai Online published on 19 June, 2015. Abstract Chronic pain is defined as pain that has lasted longer than three-six month where perception, interpretation and evaluation of pain depends on increased peripheral and central nervous system responsiveness to peripheral noxious and non noxious stimuli. Several studies in the past say that chronic pain is accompanied with depression, anxiety, stress and kinesiophobia. The fear avoidance model explains changes in motor behavior resulting from pain that progress from acute to chronic. From the literature thus reviewed, one indentifies a possible relationship between motor function in chronic pain conditions and cognitive functioning with respect to the depressive thoughts that accompany chronic pain. The present study aims to study the relationship between these psychological domains and balance function in individuals with chronic pain. 120 individuals with chronic pain conditions participated as subjects in the study. Balance function was assessed using bergs balance scale. DAS scale was used to determine the presence and severity of depression, stress and anxiety and TAMPA score was used to assess kinesiophobia. When 120 subjects were studied for the correlation between balance the psychological dysfunction, no significant correlation was found. However when the subjects with balance score of 56 (full score of berg balance scale) were excluded from the analysis, the relationship between balance & kinesiophobia (Spearman r = -0.08465, The two-tailed P value is 0.6035), anxiety (Spearman r = -0.2127, The two-tailed P value is 0.1877), stress (Spearman r = -0.03286, The two-tailed P value is 0.8405) was found to be consistently negative though not statistically significant. The relationship between balance & depression (Spearman r = 0.4811, the two-tailed P value is 0.0017) was negative with high degree of statistical significance. Thus in this study all the subjects with chronic pain were not found to have balance issues. Conclusion In chronic pain conditions there seems to be a relationship between psychological functions i.e. the cognitive& affective features of a person's profile and balance function only in cases when balance appears to deviate from normal. Top Keywords Depression, Balance, fear avoidance. Top |