Turkish Version of the Worry About Pain Questionnaire

Pain is one of the main complaints that causes people to apply to health institutions. Pain is seen as a passive warning signal of an underlying disease process; When it becomes chronic, it is considered a disease on its own. Pain that persists longer than the expected recovery time is defined as chronic pain. Pain is associated with a number of psychological, physical, and social factors. Clinical observations report that various psychological problems, especially anxiety, and depression, accompany chronic pain, and the long-term persistence of pain significantly impacts a patient's quality of life. Chronic musculoskeletal pain causes fatigue, sleep disruption, and activity and participation restrictions. Therefore, evaluation of pain originating from the musculoskeletal system and factors that cause and increase pain need to be addressed from a biopsychosocial perspective. Chronic pain is an ideal environment for anxiety to develop. If the person's chronic pain cannot be resolved, anxiety increases and the anxiety becomes excessive, the person may lose the ability to distinguish what is dangerous from what is not, as he cannot evaluate pain-related cues properly. Anxiety and depression scales are often used to assess the long-term psychosocial consequences of chronic musculoskeletal pain. However, these scales are inadequate to explain the relationship between pain and anxiety. The Worry About Pain Questionnaire is a self-report scale of 15 items specifically developed to assess pain-related pressure. To our knowledge, there is no standard, valid, and reliable Turkish questionnaire in the literature that evaluates the pain-related concerns of individuals with musculoskeletal pain and takes into account the cultural differences of Turkish patients. For this reason, our study aims to translate and culturally adapt the Worry About Pain Questionnaire into Turkish in individuals with chronic musculoskeletal pain and to examine the psychometric properties of the Turki