Role of Emotional Trauma in FM Questioned in New Study
A new study appears to discredit the belief that emotional trauma can lead to the development of fibromyalgia. Researchers looked at potentially traumatic life events in women with fibromyalgia and compared them to illness severity. They also investigated what the women believed had triggered the illness.
The study found no relationship between traumatic life events and measures of health, including physical health, mental health, pain load and overall disability. Researchers found no relationship between the perceived causes of illness and traumatic life events, either in childhood or adulthood.
Continue here from February 2013 FM-CP Advocate Newsletter
The single correlation they found was that women who had a traumatic event in childhood were more likely to attribute their illness to psychological causes. That doesn't mean the childhood trauma did lead to fibromyalgia; it means that people with past trauma are more likely to believe it does. This research did not examine the validity of these beliefs.
NOTE: It is interesting that the results of this study seem to discredit emotional trauma as playing a role in the development of fibromyalgia, compared to an Australian study about psychological stress that was a poster at the American College of Rheumatology (ACR) meeting. The results of the study correlated psychological stress as being one of the triggers of fibromyalgia symptoms.
