United States: According to the CDC, there has been a recent report published that stated about 25 percent of American adults actually reported chronic pain in 2023.
CDC says slightly more than a quarter of a quarter (24.3%) of respondents said they had chronic pain most of the days or every day of the week, Over 8% of people with high-impact chronic pain within the previous 3 months, that is, their pain has affected their major life or work.
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The study used data from the 2023 National Health Interview Survey, a US household survey conducted year-round.
Chronic pain was identified using the respondents’ answers to a question concerning the frequency of having pain in the three months preceding the survey, the Washington Post reported.
The numbers have gone up from the data gathered in 2019, where the CDC estimated that 20.4 percent of adults reported having chronic pain while only 7.4 percent of adults reported having high-impact chronic pain.
Interestingly, the prevalence of chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain both rose with age; however, American Indian and Alaska Native non-Hispanic adults experienced a higher prevalence of chronic pain than Asian non-Hispanic and Hispanic adults.
For chronic pain, women were more likely than men to experience both overall chronic pain and high-impact chronic pain, as were those living in less urbanized regions, according to the report.
Furthermore, as Jacqueline W. Lucas and Inderbir Sohi, co-authors, added, “Chronic pain and pain that often restricts life or work activities, referred to in this report as high-impact chronic pain, are the most common reasons adults seek medical care and are associated with decreased quality of life, opioid misuse, increased anxiety and depression, and unmet mental health needs,” the Washington Post reported.