Depression and anxiety are associated with increased perception of pain severity, whereas prolonged duration of acute pain leads to increased mood dysregulation.
MD6 student Athena Michaelides is the co-author of the paper review ‘Depression, anxiety and acute pain: links and management challenges’
Which, among other things, concludes that data on pain threshold in depressed patients is conflicting. This discrepancy encourages standardized methods of measuring pain and is an important point of further research.