Differences in psychosocial responses to pain between sufficiently and insufficiently active adults with arthritis

Objective: Adults with arthritis struggle to meet the physical activity recommendation for disease self-management. Identifying psychosocial factors that differentiate adults who meet (sufficiently active) or do not meet (insufficiently active) the recommendation is needed. This study sought to examine differences in psychosocial responses to arthritis pain among adults who were sufficiently or insufficiently active.Design: This prospective study included adults with medically diagnosed arthritis (N = 136, Mage = 49.75 ± 13.88 years) who completed two online surveys: (1) baseline: pain and psychosocial responses to pain and (2) two weeks later: physical activity.Main outcome measures: Psychosocial responses examined in this study were psychological flexibility in response to pain, pain anxiety and maladaptive responses to pain anxiety.Results: A between-groups MANCOVA comparing sufficiently active (n = 87) to insufficiently active (n = 49) participants on psychosocial responses, after controlling for pain...