According to study author Dr. Louise Murphy of the CDC’s arthritis programme, ‘What we ultimately took away is that we’ve usually thought of arthritis as a condition that can have such profound disabling consequences, but what came out here is how profound the emotional consequences are. This is a call to action.’
For the study, which was published in the journal Arthritis Care and Research, over 1700 adults, age 45 and older, who had been diagnosed with arthritis or other rheumatic conditions, took part in a survey. These other conditions included osteoarthritis, the most common joint disorder. Murphy and her co-investigators designed the questionnaires to determine the emotional wellbeing of the study’s participants.
The results were that over a third of those surveyed reported having at least one of the two mental health conditions of anxiety or depression. The researchers were surprised to discover that anxiety was far more common than depression among the study participants: ‘The proportion of people with anxiety was almost twice as high as depression,’ Murphy said. ‘That was a surprise because both in the clinical world and among arthritis researchers, there’s so much more attention paid to depression.’
Previous studies have already established a link between chronic pain and depression, but various medical groups, such as the National Institute of Mental Health, warn that experts still do not fully understand the exact, underlying links. The authors of this study agree that the relationship between anxiety, depression and chronic pain is ‘complex’ and each acts both independently and synergistically as a risk factor for the others.
According to Dr. Eric Gall, interim director of the University of Arizona’s Arthritis Centre, ‘These people have chronic pain, and that breeds depression. They’re frightened about the disease, they’re frightened about being crippled and not being able to do things. They have problems with their marriages and jobs and so forth.’
The reason that researchers have focused on the link between arthritis and depression rather than on anxiety, Gall explained, may be because they think of anxiety as simply accompanying depression. Murphy added, ‘Health care providers can make an important difference by screening all people with arthritis for anxiety and depression. We need to be addressing arthritis on a broader basis.’