Personality and pain intensity in rheumatoid arthritis patients: The mediating role of pain catastrophizing and cognitive emotion regulation strategies

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory and progressive disease, the most important symptom of which is chronic pain. In this study, we aimed to investigate the relationship between personality facets and pain intensity through the mediating role of cognitive emotion regulation strategies and pain catastrophizing in 204 patients with RA. The revised NEO personality inventory, short form of cognitive emotion regulation questionnaire (CERQ-short), the pain catastrophizing scale (PCS), and the short form of the revised McGill pain questionnaire (SF-MPQ-2) were used to measure the variables. The results showed that the model examination presented a good fitness of the proposed theoretical model. According to paths analysis, among personality facets, neuroticism was significantly associated with pain intensity directly, and it also had significant indirect effects on pain through negative emotion regulation strategies and pain catastrophizing. Meanwhile, the indirect effect of agreeableness on pain intensity through pain catastrophizing was in an opposite direction. There were no meaningful indirect associations between other personality facets and pain. Consequently, recent research reaffirming that change can occur on these mediating cognitive factors gives great promise that such a modification in this context by considering patients' personalities could help reduce suffering from pain in these patients.