Managing arthritic pain: The role of spiritual/religious coping, extraversion and emotional stability

Abstract

Previous research into spirituality, religiosity and coping tends to suffer from weak measurement of spirituality/religiosity and has primarily focused on Christianity. The impact of personality has also not been adequately investigated and there is limited research into spiritual coping with arthritis. The current study therefore examined the impact of spiritual/religious coping and personality on arthritic pain. 113 participants with a variety of arthritic diseases were recruited from across the United Kingdom (mean age 58 years, S.D. = 15.8; mean length of time since diagnosis 14.4 years, S.D. = 11.7). Data was collected on the following variables through a set of questionnaires: spiritual perspective, pain experience over the past week, emotional stability, extraversion, general coping strategies and spiritual/religious coping strategies. It was hypothesised that Spiritual Perspective, Emotional Stability, Extraversion and Positive and Negative Spiritual/Religious Coping would most strongly predict participants’ Worst Pain and Pain Interference over the past week. Regression analyses were conducted on both the full sample (n = 113) and the spiritual/religious coping sample (n = 86). In the full sample, the regression model accounted for 28.7% of variance in Worst Pain (F (9, 103) = 4.60, p < 0.001) and 39.5% of variance in Pain Interference (F (9, 103) = 7.47, p < 0.001). In the second sample, the regression model accounted for 36.5% of variance in Worst Pain (F (8, 77) = 5.52, p < 0.001) and 49.7% of variance in Pain Interference ((F (8, 77) = 9.49, p < 0.001). Significant independent contributions of Spiritual Perspective, Catastrophising, Coping Self Statements and Diverting Attention were demonstrated. No independent effects were observed for Extraversion or Emotional Stability, while Negative S/R Coping was found to be just non-significant in predicting Worst Pain (p = 0.05). The same was found for Positive S/R Coping in Pain Interference (p = 0.07). The results suggest that there is little effect of Emotional Stability and Extraversion on the arthritic pain experience, while further research is needed to clarify the influence of religious/spiritual coping.