Past Pain Experience and Perception of Experimental Pain

The perception of moderated experimental pain (about 3 out of ten with visual analogue scale VAS) in subjects with schizophrenia (Girard et coll., 2011), major depression (ED) (bipolar or isolated/recurrent episode) (to be published) in comparison with controls without psychiatric pathologies show that exploration of pain in situation like medical examination to identify painful points should be done in the same conditions for persons with psychiatric troubles and persons without mental disease. But the risk is that the expression of pain, either in experimental conditions nor in the daily life, is not in relation with the feeling or perception of pain. Numerous factors may interfere in the pain message modulation, like the past pain experience, stress and anxiety, which are not or partially explored in experimental studies. The individual experience of pain is constructed throughout the whole life, from several influences (biological, psychological, and sociocultural). The symptoms interfaces of the different psychiatric troubles seem to be widely involved in the pain process, and its progressive construction. This study aims to better understand the relationships between all those variables. Procedures applied : Anterior pain experience evaluation (questionnaire); Pain tests : 160 kPa pressure application to determine corresponding pain with VAS), and ischemia induction to determine the time necessary to obtain a pain equivalent to 3 out of 10; anxiety and emotional evaluation (Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale), catastrophizing evaluation (Pain Catastrophizing Scale), HR variation and BP variation (vegetative measures linked to anxiety) collection of diagnosis, and therapeutic treatment