Background
The degree to which shared vulnerability and protective factors for chronic pain and trauma-related symptoms contribute to pain adjustment in chronic pain patients who have experienced a traumatic event remains unclear.
Purpose
The purpose is to test a hypothetical model of the contribution of experiential avoidance, resilience and pain acceptance to pain adjustment in a sample of 229 chronic back pain patients who experienced a traumatic event before the onset of pain.
Methods
Structural equation modelling was used to test the linear relationships between the variables.
Results
The empirical model shows significant relationships between the variables: resilience on pain acceptance and trauma-related symptoms, experiential avoidance on trauma-related symptoms and experiential avoidance, pain acceptance and trauma-related symptoms on pain adjustment.
Conclusions
This study demonstrates the role of a vulnerability pathway (i.e. experiential avoidance) and a protective pathway (i.e. resilience and pain acceptance) in adaptation to pain after a traumatic event.