Identification of Strategies Used to Cope with Chronic Pain in Older Persons Receiving Primary Care from a Veterans Affairs Medical Center

Abstract

Older primary care patients use a broad variety of coping strategies to cope with chronic pain. Studies are needed to confirm these findings in other older populations and to characterize the longitudinal effects of the coping strategies. Given the finding that the perceived effectiveness of most coping strategies was modest, efforts to increase their effectiveness in older persons are indicated.