Psychological Profile of Patients with Chronic Low Back Pain

OBJECTIVES: To assess the frequency of depression, anxiety, and stress in patients with Chronic Low Back Pain (CLBP) using Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-42). METHODOLOGY: This descriptive study was performed from January 2019 to June 2019. All those patients with chronic low back pain with duration of more than 6 months were included. Patients below 20 and above 60 years were excluded to eliminate the effect of extreme ages. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scale (DASS-42) was used in this study. RESULTS: In this study, a total of 127 patients were successfully interviewed. The mean age of the sample was 36.46 (SD±7.38) with a minimum age of 22 years and maximum of 59 years. Out of these 127 patients, 83 (65.4%) were female while 44 (34.6%) were male patients. The minimum duration of chronic low back pain in our patients was 8 months while the maximum was 55 months with a mean of 28 months (SD 9.9). The mean DASS score for depression was 11.8 (SD±4.23), anxiety was 7.5 (SD±2.9), stress was 12.1 (SD±4.0). Similarly, both genders had equal level of depression and anxiety but females were more experiencing the stress. CONCLUSION: Abnormal levels of stress anxiety and depression are a common finding in our population with CLBP