Don’t worry, be happy: Could optimism counteract negative effects of pain?

Warning: there is an earworm contained in this post! How on earth could anyone be happy when they have pain, huh? Well, more about that in a minute, first let’s look at this interesting study from Maastricht University by Jantine Boselie, Linda Vancleef, Tom Smeets and Madelon Peters. We know that having chronic pain reduces a person’s ability to undertake complex cognitive tasks, particularly those that involve making decisions or problem solving. People become overwhelmed, fatigued and then perform poorly when they need to maintain concentration when they’re experiencing pain, and researchers have found that this is, at least in part, because pain demands attention. More than this, self regulation, or the ability to modify thoughts and behaviours in order to achieve what is important, can become depleted over time, compounding the original loss of capacity. It’s enough to make you feel just a bit unhappy! These researchers investigated whether optimism might (a) be able to be induced in people who are currently experiencing pain, and (b) might be able to reduce some of the fatiguing effects of self-regulation depletion. This is based on the notion that people who remain optimistic keep persisting with tasks even when the going is tough. They also investigated whether experimental pain has a direct effect on self-regulation (well, actually, executive task performance which is in turn affected by self-regulation status). Once again, healthy undergradu...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Occupational Therapists Authors: Tags: Coping strategies Pain Pain conditions Research Resilience Health Source Type: blogs