The study, which included more than 700 people with chronic pain and focused on the relationship between anger, feelings of injustice and the level of pain experienced by patients, revealed that the way patients feel and deal with anger may determine the severity and duration of pain in the long term.
The international research team, which included researchers from Stanford, Boston and Innsbruck universities, used latent pattern analysis to identify patterns of anger that differ in how an individual experiences, expresses and controls anger, and how unfairly they feel about their health condition.
The researchers found that patients who displayed moderate to high levels of anger and a sense of injustice, such as those who felt their pain represented unfair treatment or an irreparable loss, reported more intense and widespread pain and higher levels of disability and psychological distress.
Conversely, those who were able to manage their anger effectively and viewed their situation with less absorption were more able to improve over time.
“Anger is not inherently bad; it is a normal emotional signal that can enhance a person’s well-being when well regulated,” says study leader Dr. Gadi Gillam, head of the Transitional Social, Cognitive and Emotional Neuroscience Laboratory (tSCAN). “But when it is coupled with a sense of injustice, it can trap individuals in a spiral of psychological and physical suffering that increases chronic pain and makes it persistent.”
Impact of results on treatment and diagnosis
Researchers have confirmed that anger patterns can predict future pain outcomes, even after accounting for anxiety and depression. The findings suggest that these patterns could be used as early diagnostic markers to identify patients at risk of chronic, long-term pain, thus facilitating more personalized and emotionally focused treatment plans.
The study emphasizes the importance of interventions tailored to address emotional regulation and perception of injustice, such as mindfulness, emotional expression, and compassion-based therapies, considering that understanding the multiple facets of anger is a key step toward developing comprehensive pain care, from treating symptoms to treating the person themselves.
The study was published in the journal Pain.
