Characteristics of Pain in Survivors of Adverse Childhood Experiences

Abstract

Adversity in childhood is a well-known independent contributor to a variety of chronic illnesses including heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. In addition, adversity in childhood increase the risk of development of mental illnesses including anxiety, depression, substance use disorder. Recent lines of research have demonstrated that adversity in childhood also increases the risk of the development of chronic pain and alters the intensity of acute pain. Adversity in childhood is understood to be an important contributor to adult health, however, little is known about how childhood adversity impacts two specific types of pain: chronic orofacial pain and acute burn pain. In this dissertation, a literature review was conducted to examine how adversity in childhood had been explored in the burn population. A secondary data analysis was performed on a sample of phenotyped chronic orofacial pain to determine a relationship between childhood adversity and chronic temporomandibular pain. A study was then developed to examine this relationship in a sample of participants with acute burn pain.