Chronic pain in Australia: a prevalence study

This study reports chronic pain prevalence in a randomly selected sample of the adult Australian population. Data were collected by Computer-Assisted Telephone interview (CATT) using randomly generated telephone numbers and a two-stage stratified sample design. Chronic pain was defined as pain exper ienced every day for three months in the six months prior to interview. The re were 17,543 completed interviews (response rate = 70.8%). Chronic pain w as reported by 17.1% of males and 20.0% of females. For males, prevalence p eaked at 27.0% in the 65-69 year age group and for females, prevalence peak ed at 31.0% in the oldest age group (80-83 years). Having chronic pain was significantly associated with older age, female gender, lower levels of com pleted education, and not having private health insurance; it was also stro ngly associated with receiving a disability benefit (adjusted OR = 3.89, P < 0.001) or unemployment benefit (adjusted OR = 1.99, P < 0.001); being une mployed for health reasons (adjusted OR = 6.41, P < 0.001): having poor sel f-rated health (adjusted OR = 7.24, P < 0.001); and high levels of psycholo gical distress (adjusted OR = 3.16, P < 0.001). Eleven per cent of males an d 13.5% of females in the survey reported some degree of interference with daily activities: caused by their pain. Prevalence of interference was high est in the 55-59 year age group in both males (17.2%) and females( 19.7%). Younger respondents with chronic pain were proportionately most likely to r eport interference due to pain, affecting 84.3% of females and 75.9% of mal es aged 20-24 years with chronic pain. Within the subgroup of respondents r eporting chronic pain, the presence of interference with daily activities c aused by pain was significantly associated with younger age; female gender; and not having private health insurance. There were strong associations be tween having interfering chronic pain and receiving disability benefits (ad justed OR = 3.31, P < 0.001) or being unemployed due to health reasons (adj usted OR = 7.94, P < 0.001, respectively). The results show that chronic pa in impacts upon a large proportion of the adult Australian population, incl uding the working age population, and is strongly associated with markers o f social disadvantage. (C) 2001 International Association for the Study of Pain. Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.