Children's tacit understanding of pain and fear/anxiety combinations

• Author(s): Batalha, Luís Manuel da Cunha ; Oliveira, Armando Luis Dinis Mónica ; Fernandes, Ananda Maria ; Grácio, Joana Catarina Gonçalves ; Viegas, Ricardo ; Silva, Ana Sousa
• Date: 2013
• Origin: Repositório Científico da Escola Superior de Enfermagem de Coimbra
• Subject(s): anxiety; pain; child
• Document Type: Conference Object
• Language: English

Description

CHILDREN'S TACIT UNDERSTANDING OF PAIN AND FEAR/ANXIETY COMBINATIONS Abstract text Background and aims: Children's experiences of pain are believed to include both sensory and affective components. One practical issue facing caregivers and health professionals is the importance to accord to each of these dimensions. This work is aimed at exploring how children themselves conceive of the relative importance of pain and pain-related fear/anxiety. Methods: 16 children aged 9-11 years old undergoing a post-operatory period ("acute-pain" group) and a sample of 19 children with no record of a regular pain experience ("pain-free" group) took part in the experiment. All were shown 25 pairs of faces arising from the factorial combination of the two sets of faces from the CAPS (5 pain faces × 5 anxiety faces), and asked to evaluate them on a graphical rating scale as to the degree of overall distress expressed by each pair. Results: An averaging rule with increasing importance of the most intense levels of both factors was found. The functional values of importance showed a larger overall importance of pain, which however resulted from the two higher levels of expressed pain. This extremity-weighting pattern was more pronounced in the acute-pain group. Conclusions: Children in both groups averaged the information on pain and anxiety, which has distinct implications from simply adding them. Accordingly, in children's mind, decreasing anxiety alone can bring the overall distress experience to values below those determined by pain alone, this being all the more so as pain is intense. Acknowledgements: Work supported by grant PTDC/PSI-PCO/107910/2008-Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology