The interrelationship between pain, life satisfaction and mental health in adults with traumatic spinal cord injury, in the context of a developing country

Study designCross-sectional, analytical study design using a conveneient sampling strategy.ObjectivesTo examine the interrelationship between pain, life satisfaction and indices of negative mental well-being amongst the traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) population.SettingWestern Cape Rehabilitation Center in Cape Town, South Africa.MethodsParticipants (n = 70) were adults (mean age of 36.3, SD = 9.2) with TSCI. Participants completed the following instruments: 10 satisfaction items from the World Health Organization Quality of Life Brief Version, short forms of the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale and the trait scale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, a one-item measure of pain intensity taken from the International Spinal Cord Injury Pain Basic Data Set and the interference scale of the Brief Pain Inventory.ResultsCorrelational analysis (Pearson r) demonstrated that all the indices of mental well-being as well as the two indices of pain was significantly negatively related to life satisfaction. In addition, life satisfaction mediated the relationship between pain intensity and depression as well as anxiety. Life satisfaction only mediated the relationship between pain interference and depression but not anxiety.ConclusionsAn improvement in life satisfaction may lead to improvements in pain interference, pain intensity as well as psychological distress, amongst persons suffering from TSCI Future research should focus on assessing measures/treatment which may improve life satisfaction in the TSCI population.