PAIN BELIEFS - ASSESSMENT AND UTILITY

When pain becomes persistent, patients may abandon previously held cul tural or personal beliefs about pain to form new paid beliefs that are more consistent with their persistent pain experience. The Pain Belie fs and Perceptions Inventory (PBPI) is an instrument to assess these n ew beliefs. This paper presents 4 studies examining the utility of the PBPI. Two studies are factor analytic and support recent literature i dentifying 4 belief factors associated with this instrument. The third and fourth studies used a new scoring method for the PBPI creating 4 scales: Mystery, Self-blame, Pain Permanence, and Pain Constancy. Thes e scales were then correlated with important pain indices such as meas ures of pain quality, psychological states (i.e., depression and anxie ty), personality traits, physical functioning, and coping strategies. Each belief appears to have a unique association with the pain indices thus supporting the rescoring of this instrument with 4 scales. Belie f in pain constancy is associated with greater pain self-report, perma nence is associated with anxiety, mystery is associated with greatest overall distress, and self-blame is associated with depressive symptom s. An appendix is included that provides clinical norms for the use of the PBPI and a revised scoring key.