General psychological acceptance and chronic pain: There is more to accept than the pain itself

An increasing body of research demonstrates that acceptance of pain is significantly associated with the quality of daily functioning in people with chronic pain. The aim of the present study was to examine acceptance more broadly in relation to a wider range of undesirable experiences these people may encounter, such as other physical symptoms, experiences of emotional distress, or distressing thoughts. One hundred forty-four, consecutive, adult patients attending interdisciplinary treatment for chronic pain participated in this study. They completed the Acceptance and Action Questionnaire-II (AAQ-II [Bond F, Hayes SC, Baer RA, Carpenter KM, Orcutt HK, Waltz T, Zettle RD. Preliminary psychometric properties of the Acceptance Action Questionnaire-II: a revised measure of psychological flexibility and acceptance, submitted for publication]), measuring their general psychological acceptance. They also completed measures of emotional, physical, and psychosocial functioning, pain acceptance, and mindfulness. The AAQ-II achieved satisfactory internal consistency, a = .89, and factor analysis revealed a unitary factor structure. Primary results showed that general psychological acceptance significantly correlated with depression, r = -.69, pain-related anxiety, r = -.59, physical disability, r = -.42, and psychosocial disability, r = -.65, all p < .001. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that general psychological acceptance added a significant increment of explained variance to the prediction of patient functioning, independent of patient background characteristics, pain, acceptance of pain, and mindfulness. These results suggest that, when people with chronic pain are willing to have undesirable psychological experiences without attempting to control them, they may function better and suffer less. General acceptance may have a unique role to play in the disability and suffering of chronic pain beyond similar processes such as acceptance of pain or mindfulness.