Previous research has demonstrated the impact of negative emotional states on pain modulation. The direction of this modulation has been shown to correspond to the arousal level and the valence of the emotional state, whether naturally occurring or induced in the laboratory. Other research has consistently linked written emotion disclosure of trauma to better long-term health outcomes among several populations. As most of these studies have focused on long-term health outcome effects of disclosure, little research has been done on the immediate effects of the paradigm on affective or physiological states. This study investigated the short-term effects of written disclosure of trauma on laboratory-induced pain, affective state, and other physiological measures of stress and arousal. Other goals of the study included investigating preexisting differences in pain sensitivity between participants corresponding to lifetime experience of trauma, and determining the degree to which baseline pain testing alters pain sensitivity after emotion induction by creating a conditioned, contextual fear. This is the first study to apply the written emotional disclosure paradigm to laboratory-induced pain.

This study was undertaken to determine whether written emotional disclosure of trauma impacted capsaicin induced pain immediately after writing and at a one-month follow-up, and the extent to which a lifetime history of trauma alters pain under neutral conditions. Three experiments were conducted to answer these questions. In Experiment 1 participants were randomly assigned to write about either a neutral or a trauma topic, and they concurrently completed the capsaicin test. In Experiment 2, the capsaicin test was administered to trauma history and no trauma history participants and pain ratings and secondary hyperalgesia were recorded under neutral conditions. In Experiment 3, participants wrote for three days and completed the radiant heat test before writing on day 1 and after writing on day 3. They also completed the capsaicin test on either day 4 or at a one-month follow-up (day 30). Taken together, these studies had several important results. First, radiant heat withdrawal latencies, ratings of pain intensity and unpleasantness, and area of secondary hyperalgesia were all significantly increased when participants had a history of traumatic experiences. This is evidence that trauma history is sufficient to alter pain regulatory mechanisms, and this may be attributable to the chronic negative affective state induced by trauma history and sensitization of shared circuits involved in both pain and emotion. Furthermore, our findings suggest that written emotional disclosure may lead to long-term changes in pain modulatory pathways that regulate central sensitization, without altering systems that regulate spontaneous pain.

Prior research has shown that affective valence and arousal interact to alter pain perception. One personally relevant method of inducing affective states is the written emotional disclosure procedure. The current study examined the immediate effects of written emotional disclosure on secondary hyperalgesia, flare, and spontaneous pain in healthy undergraduate men and women. Fifty-five men and women undergraduates participated in an IRB approved experiment in which they wrote about a traumatic or neutral event fro twenty minutes. After writing, the participants underwent pain perception testing for area of secondary hyperalgesia, flare, and spontaneous pain. Results indicated that women writing about a traumatic experience rated their spontaneous pain as more intense than those writing about a neutral topic, whereas males did not. In addition, men showed greater physiological arousal and area of flare than women. These findings suggest that men and women experience different affective and pain modulatory reactions to written emotional disclosure, though the underlying mechanisms remain to be elucidated.

N/A (long introduction)

Thesis (M. Tech.(Chiropractic))--Technikon Witwatersrand, 2004. / Supervisor: Malany Moodley ; Co-supervisor: Neil De Villiers. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 107-114). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ed. D)--College of Saint Mary -- Omaha 2009. / A dissertation submitted by Barbara J. Braband to College of Saint Mary in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Doctor in Education with an emphasis on Health Professions Education. This dissertation has been accepted for the faculty of College of Saint Mary by: Peggy L. Hawkins, PhD, RN, B.C., CNE, chair ; Connie L. Clark, PhD, RN, committee member ; Pat Morin, PhD, RN, committee member. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2001. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 126-161).

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Texas at Arlington, 2009.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brigham Young University. Dept. of Exercise Sciences, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Ph.D.