Teenagers who experience back pain are more likely to suffer from anxiety and depression

As per a new study in the Journal of Public Health, it explains that adolescents who experience back pain more frequently are also more likely to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol, and report problems like anxiety and depression.


During adolescence, the prevalence of musculoskeletal pain (pain arising from the bones, joints or muscles) in general, and back pain, in particular, rises steeply. Although often dismissed as trivial and fleeting, adolescent back pain is responsible for substantial health care use, school absence, and interference with day-to-day activities in some children.


Researchers used data collected from approximately 6500 teenagers. The proportion of participants reporting smoking, drinking, and missing school rose incrementally with increasing frequency of pain. For example, 14-15-year-olds that experienced pain more than once a week were 2-3 times more likely to have drunk alcohol or smoked in the past month than those who rarely or never had pain. Similarly, students that experienced pain more than once a week were around twice as likely to have missed school in the previous term. The trend with anxiety and depression was less clear, although there was a marked difference between the children who reported no pain and those who reported frequent pain.


Lead author Steven Kamper said, "Findings like this provide an argument that we should be including pain in the broader conversation about adolescent health. Unfortunately, our understanding of the causes and impacts pain in this age group is quite limited, the area is badly in need of more research."


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