Emotion dysregulation in the experience of pain among persons living with HIV/AIDS

ABSTRACT Persons living with HIV and AIDS (PLWHA) report disproportionally high rates of pain. Pain among PLWHA has been associated with poor medication adherence and anxiety and depressive symptoms. This relationship may be primarily driven by elevated negative affect, and one factor that may be important to understanding elevated negative affect is emotion dysregulation. Therefore, the current study sought to examine emotion dysregulation (Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale) in terms of multi-dimensional pain experience (pain severity, pain interference, pain affective distress, pain life control; Multidimensional Pain Inventory; Turk and Rudy (1988) among a sample of 162 HIV+ individuals (M age = 47.65, SD = 8.59, 35.2% female). Two-step hierarchical regression analyses revealed that emotion dysregulation total score was significantly associated with each of the pain variables. These results may suggest PLWHA who demonstrate greater emotion dysregulation struggle to effectively manage negative affect associated with their pain experience, exacerbating the severity of pain symptoms across numerous clinically-relevant domains. The novel findings may provide important assessment and intervention targets for PLWHA living with pain.

**摘要**：艾滋病病毒感染者和艾滋病患者（PLWHA）报告的疼痛发生率过高。PLWHA的疼痛与药物依从性差以及焦虑和抑郁症状有关。这种关系可能主要由负面情绪升高所驱动，而理解负面情绪升高的一个重要因素可能是情绪调节不良。因此，本研究试图从多维疼痛体验（疼痛严重程度、疼痛干扰、疼痛情感困扰、疼痛对生活的控制；多维疼痛量表；特克和鲁迪（1988年））的角度，在162名艾滋病病毒阳性个体（平均年龄 = 47.65岁，标准差 = 8.59，35.2%为女性）的样本中检验情绪调节不良（情绪调节困难量表）。两步分层回归分析显示，情绪调节不良总分与每个疼痛变量都显著相关。这些结果可能表明，情绪调节不良更严重的PLWHA难以有效管理与其疼痛体验相关的负面情绪，从而加剧了多个临床相关领域的疼痛症状的严重程度。这些新发现可能为伴有疼痛的PLWHA提供重要的评估和干预目标。