Back pain and the experience of stress, efforts and moods

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Abstract
Ninety-six female office employees were recruited on the basis of their responses to the Standardised Nordic Questionnaire (SNQ) for assessment of musculoskeletal complaints. They presented mild to severe symptoms in one or more of the areas defined as neck, shoulders, and low back. These subjects also completed the Tension and Effort Stress Inventory (TESI) for assessment of subjective exposure to stressors, efforts to cope and experience of eight pleasant and eight unpasant moods/emotions. Product-moment correlations and stepwise multiple regression analyses tested the relations between TESI-scores and SNQ-scores. A particularly significant association emerged for resentment, guilt and effort with back pain. Age and length of employment were positively correlated with low back complaints, whereas they were unrelated to scores for shoulder complaints. The results lent support to the view that efforts to cope and unpleasant interpersonal relations (resentment, guilt) are of importance to the experience of back pain.