Pain and learning in primary school: a population-based study

Abstract

Despite the frequency of pain among children, little is known about its effects on learning and school outcomes. The objective of this study was to quantify the association of pain and academic achievement while taking into account the presence of co-occurring emotional symptoms. A population-based stratified random sample of 1239 students aged 8 to 9 years from primary schools in Melbourne, Australia, was recruited for the Childhood to Adolescence Transition Study. Children indicated sites of pain that had lasted for a day or longer in the past month using a pain manikin. Depressive- and anxiety-related symptoms were assessed using child-reported items. National assessment results for reading and numeracy were used to measure academic achievement. Sixty-five percent of children reported pain in at least 1 body site and 16% reported chronic pain. Increasing number of pain sites was associated with poorer reading scores in a dose-response fashion (β = -3.1; 95% confidence interval -4.9 to -1.3; P < 0.001). The association was only partly attenuated when adjusting for emotional symptoms (β = -2.6; 95% confidence interval -4.5 to -0.8; P < 0.001) and was not moderated by emotional symptoms. Children with chronic pain were a year behind their peers in both reading and numeracy. Among primary school students, pain was associated with lower reading scores even after adjusting for the presence of emotional symptoms. Although population-based longitudinal studies will be required to ascertain consistency and possible causality, grounds exist for considering pain and emotional symptoms in the assessment of children with reading difficulties.

Sleep problems increase the risk of musculoskeletal pain in boys but not girls: a prospective cohort study

“…A pain manikin was used to assess a total of 17 different pain sites in the front and back of the body: head, neck/throat, thoracic spine, upper back, lumbar spine, lower back, chest, abdomen, shoulder, elbow, forearm, hand, buttock, thigh, knee, shin/calf and foot. Such measures have been shown to be reliable in children from the age of 8 years [22,23]. The answer to the pain question (yes/no) together with the body sites indicated in the pain manikin (excluding those relative to the head and abdomen) were used to classify participants as "having musculoskeletal pain" or "not having musculoskeletal pain", respectively, at each time point.…”

Prevalence and associated psychosocial and health factors of chronic pain in adolescents: Differences by sex and age

“…Psychosocial factors, including depressive and anxious symptoms (Cohen, Vowles, & Eccleston, 2010;Koenig et al, 2015;Stanford et al, 2008), school attitudes and performance (Gordon, Dooley, & Wood, 2004;Grimby-Ekman et al, 2018;Kosola et al, 2017), as well as health behaviours, such as sleep and physical activity (Grimby-Ekman et al, 2018;Luntamo et al, 2012;Robberstad et al, 2010), are relevant to the development, maintenance or experience of chronic pain. However, the results of recent systematic reviews are inconsistent and sex differences are often ignored (Huguet et al, 2017(Huguet et al, , 2016.…”

Christ vs. Communism: Communism as a Religious Social Problem in Finland's Proto‐Fascist Lapua Movement in the 1930s

“…On the contrary, the movement's leader Vihtori Kosola wrote that "everyone of us knows that when the pious peasant of Ostrobothnia, the one who has faith in the God of our fathers and who has always deeply respected the law, when a part of the nation like this sees the conscious breaking of the law as the only way out, he does it with a heavy heart." 110 Violence had no intrinsic value, but was justified in removing the social problem of Communism.…”