METHODS: A cohort of 611 male Malaysian Army recruits were recruited and followed up at 3 and 6 months. Pain catastrophising, MSD, sociodemographic and work factors were measured using a self-administered questionnaire, and MSI incidence was retrieved from the medical records. Multivariable fixed effects regression was used to model the cumulative incidence of MSD and MSI.
RESULTS: Approximately 12% of the recruits were diagnosed with incident MSI and 80% reported incident MSD. Higher pain catastrophising at baseline was associated with higher 6 month MSD risk (adjusted OR (aOR) 1.6 per 1 SD increase of Pain Catastrophising Scale (PCS) scores; 95% CI 1.2 to 2.0), and longitudinally associated with MSD incidence (aOR 1.2, 95% CI 1.1 to 1.4). Pain catastrophising was not associated with MSI incidence (aOR 1.0, 95% CI 0.8 to 1.3). The association between pain catastrophising and self-reported MSD was stronger among recruits with self-reported past injury (p for interaction <0.001).
CONCLUSIONS: Pain catastrophising was able to predict symptomatic MSD, and not physician-diagnosed MSI, and these findings are directly related to individual health beliefs. Pain catastrophising has a greater influence on how military recruits perceived their musculoskeletal conditions during training, and efforts to reduce pain catastrophising may be beneficial.
DESIGN AND METHODS: Four PPSs, including headache, chest pain, low back pain, and muscle pain, and subjective depressive symptoms were assessed using the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised.
FINDINGS: Out of 528 participants, 390 (73.9%) had at least one PPS. After adjusting for sex, depression severity, disability, fatigue, physical health status, and mental health status, PPSs were found to be associated with crying easily, blaming oneself, feeling lonely, feeling blue, and worrying too much.
PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Almost three-quarters of Asian patients with MDD experience PPSs. PPSs are associated with some subjective feelings of depression.
METHODS: Thirty-eight women who use drugs were interviewed using a semi-structured topic guide in Kelantan, Penang, Johor, Kuala Lumpur, and Selangor. Locations were chosen purposively. Nineteen women were interviewed individually and the remaining 19 were in focus group discussions (FGDs). All interviews were transcribed verbatim, translated to English, and analyzed with NVivo.
RESULTS: Median age of respondents was 35.5 years old, 89.5% ethnic Malays, majority having married below the age of 20, and were of low socioeconomic backgrounds. Youngest age of initiation into drug use was 9 years old. Most reported is inhalation of amphetamine-type substances. Seven reported ever injecting. Three themes emerged: (a) repeating patterns of fluid family structures and instability; (b) "pain" and "difficulty" as features of home life; and (c) seeking marriage as a source of stabilization and practices of power within those marriages. Respondents often came from very fluid family environments and married to find stability, only to be drawn into a similar cycle. None of the women who had been separated from their children either institutionally, by family members, or by third parties, had accessed legal recourse for the loss of their parental rights.
CONCLUSION: Unstable familial relationships or environments contributed to earlier initiation of drug use which raised questions about support services for WWUD and children who use drugs. Respondents were drawn into unstable and/or abusive relationships, perpetuating social inequalities that marked their own familial environments during childhood. These findings support the need for additional services to support the unique needs of WWUD, including domestic violence services, financial and life skills, parental rights assistance, and empowerment programs.
METHODS: The search strategies were performed via EBSCO MEDLINE, EBSCO CINAHL, Science Direct, PubMed, and PEDro databases from 2006 to 2016. The keywords "patient education", "low back pain", "elderly", "older adults", "older persons" and "older people" were used during the literature search. Boolean operators were used to expand or limit the searching scope and manual exclusion was performed to choose articles eligible for this study.
RESULTS: A total of 2799 articles were retrieved but only five articles were related with patient education for older people with LBP. Findings suggest that patient education for older people may differ in terms of its contents such as health education, self-management, video education, and postural education. The high methodological quality of the studies revealed that patient education showed improvement in terms of pain, disability and quality of life among older people with LBP.
CONCLUSIONS: Patient education improved pain and had positive effects on disability and quality of life among older people with LBP. However, due to the limited number of RCTs more studies are needed to provide evidence for its effectiveness.
OBJECTIVES: To assess the prevalence of self-reported low back pain (LBP), and neck and/or shoulder pain (NSP) among secondary school teachers; and to evaluate the association of LBP and NSP with psychological distress and work-related psychosocial factors.
METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study conducted among teachers in the state of Penang, Malaysia. The participants were recruited via a two stage sampling method. Information on demographic, psychological distress, work-related psychosocial factors, and musculoskeletal pain (LBP and NSP) in the past 12 months was collected using a self-administered questionnaire. Poisson regression was used to estimate the prevalence ratio (PR) for the associations between psychological distress and work-related psychosocial factors with LBP and NSP.
RESULTS: The prevalence of self-reported LBP and NSP among 1482 teachers in the past 12 months was 48.0% (95% Confidence Interval (CI) 45.2%, 50.9%) and 60.1% (95% CI 57.4%, 62.9%) respectively. From the multivariate analysis, self-reported LBP was associated with teachers who reported severe to extremely severe depression (PR: 1.71, 95% CI 1.25, 2.32), severe to extremely severe anxiety (1.46, 95% CI 1.22, 1.75), high psychological job demand (1.29, 95% CI 1.06, 1.57), low skill discretion (1.28, 95% CI 1.13, 1.47) and poorer mental health (0.98, 95% CI 0.97, 0.99). Self-reported NSP was associated with mild to moderate anxiety (1.18, 95% CI 1.06, 1.33), severe to extremely severe anxiety (1.25, 95% CI 1.09, 1.43), low supervisory support (1.13, 95% CI 1.03, 1.25) and poorer mental health (0.98, 95% CI 0.97, 0.99).
CONCLUSIONS: Self-reported LBP and NSP were common among secondary school teachers. Interventions targeting psychological distress and work-related psychosocial characteristics may reduce musculoskeletal pain among school teachers.