New stats on the prevalence of depression, anxiety with chronic pain
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A huge new meta-analysis of data about almost 350,000 people in 50 countries showed that about forty percent of chronic pain patients are depressed and/or anxious. And how much depression and anxiety do people have without pain? Just 13% and 16%. See the free full text for some nuances, but basically chronic pain comes with about three times the depression/anxiety.
Although that is a lot of depression and anxiety, the only surprise to me is that it’s not even worse. So about 60% of people with chronic pain are in a reasonably good mood? That’s impressive in its own way! But not all chronic pain is equally intimidating, of course.