Previous research suggests that individuals with mental health needs and chronic pain may be less likely to use mental health treatment compared with those with mental health needs only. Yet, few studies have investigated the existence of population-level differences in mental health treatment use. We analyzed data from the National Health Interview Survey (n = 31,997) to address this question. We found that chronic pain was associated with end-to-end disparities in the mental health journeys of U.S. adults: (1) Those living with chronic pain are overrepresented among U.S. adults with mental health needs; (2) among U.S. adults with mental health needs, those living with chronic pain had a lower prevalence of mental health treatment use; (3) among U.S. adults who used mental health treatment, those living with chronic pain had a higher prevalence of screening positive for unremitted anxiety or depression; (4) among U.S. adults living with both chronic pain and mental health needs, suboptimal mental health experiences were more common than otherwise-just 44.4% of those living with mental health needs and co-occurring chronic pain reported use of mental health treatment and screened negative for unremitted anxiety and depression, compared with 71.5% among those with mental health needs only. Overall, our results suggest that U.S. adults with chronic pain constitute an underrecognized majority of those living with unremitted anxiety/depression symptoms and that the U.S. healthcare system is not yet adequately equipped to educate, screen, navigate to care, and successfully address their unmet mental health needs.

中文翻译：

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患有慢性疼痛的美国成年人未得到满足的心理健康需求。


先前的研究表明，与仅有心理健康需求的人相比，有心理健康需求和慢性疼痛的人可能不太可能使用心理健康治疗。然而，很少有研究调查心理健康治疗使用中存在的人群水平差异。我们分析了来自全国健康访谈调查 （n = 31,997） 的数据来解决这个问题。我们发现，慢性疼痛与美国成年人心理健康旅程中的端到端差异有关：（1） 患有慢性疼痛的人在有心理健康需求的美国成年人中的比例过高;（2） 在有心理健康需求的美国成年人中，患有慢性疼痛的人使用心理健康治疗的流行率较低;（3） 在使用心理健康治疗的美国成年人中，患有慢性疼痛的人未缓解的焦虑或抑郁筛查阳性的患病率更高;（4） 在同时患有慢性疼痛和心理健康需求的美国成年人中，次优的心理健康体验比其他情况更常见——只有 44.4% 的有心理健康需求并同时发生慢性疼痛的人报告使用了心理健康治疗，并且未缓解的焦虑和抑郁筛查呈阴性，而在只有心理健康需求的人中，这一比例为 71.5%。总体而言，我们的结果表明，患有慢性疼痛的美国成年人在患有未缓解的焦虑/抑郁症状的人中占未被充分认识的大多数，并且美国医疗保健系统尚未具备足够的设备来教育、筛查、导航护理和成功解决他们未得到满足的心理健康需求。