Anxiety and Pain: Mental Health is also Physical

The primary objective of this retrospective analysis was to investigate the relationship between chronic pain and anxiety diagnosis. The secondary objective was to examine migraine occurrence in those with or without anxiety. It was hypothesized a relationship would be significant for both. The ReCenter database used was the PROMIS Profiles-HUI data, which included the data of 3000 randomly selected adults, age 18 or over. Identifying as female increased the odds of reporting anxiety by 39.9%. Age was negatively correlated with the presence of anxiety. It was found that having anxiety increased the chance of migraine occurrence, particularly for patients identified as female. Overall, there were some significant associations between pain experiences and anxiety, specifically with general health and pain caused by emotional tension. This information could be useful to future research and treatment outcomes when considering the challenges and disparities in treating chronic pain, including gender.