Abstract

Chronic pain influences many aspects of a patient’s life and often results in physical disability. There are many concepts to explain this condition of disability. For example, several psychological variables like coping with pain, depression, hypervigilance, catastrophizing and fear avoidance are considered in literature to play an important role. In Vlaeyen’s model of fear avoidance, he proposes that in a first step negative affectivity and threatening illness information could trigger the development of pain catastrophizing thoughts and subsequently result in pain-related fear and avoidance, hypervigilance, physical disuse leading to deconditioning and physiological deterioration, depression, and disability. In turn all these consequences could again have an impact on the patient’s pain experiences [1].