Psychosocial Profiles in Adults With Chronic Musculoskeletal Pain Attending Self‐Funded Manual Bodywork Therapy in Japan: A Cross‐Sectional Latent Profile Analysis
Ryota Imai, Shohei Kata, Naoyuki Okada, Takuya KishiroABSTRACT
Background
Musculoskeletal pain presentations are heterogeneous, but routine intake assessment often relies on individual symptom scores rather than multidimensional psychosocial patterns. In this study, we aimed to identify self‐reported psychosocial profiles among adults with chronic musculoskeletal pain attending a self‐funded manual bodywork therapy service in Japan.
Methods
We analysed baseline data from consecutive adult attendees. Of 21,498 eligible participants, 20,341 had complete profiling data, and 12,235 with pain duration ≥ 3 months formed the primary analytic sample. Latent profile analysis used four standardized total‐score indicators: pain intensity, Central Sensitization Inventory‐9 (CSI‐9), Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) and Tampa Scale for Kinesiophobia‐11 (TSK‐11). Solutions with two to 10 profiles were evaluated using fit, classification precision, profile size, stability, parsimony and interpretability.
Results
A six‐profile solution was retained: high pain/lower fear (1028; 8.4%), globally low burden (645; 5.3%), low‐to‐moderate burden (2686; 22.0%), intermediate burden (4113; 33.6%), globally elevated burden (575; 4.7%) and psychosocially elevated burden (3188; 26.1%). Catastrophizing and kinesiophobia more strongly differentiated profiles than pain intensity alone. High pain/lower fear showed high pain intensity with comparatively lower kinesiophobia, whereas psychosocially elevated burden showed prominent catastrophizing and kinesiophobia despite less extreme pain intensity and CSI‐9 scores than globally elevated burden.
Conclusions
Six self‐reported psychosocial profiles were identified in this self‐funded chronic musculoskeletal pain cohort. The findings are descriptive and hypothesis‐generating and require longitudinal and external validation before prognostic or treatment‐stratification use.
Significance Statement
Using routine intake data from 12,235 adults with chronic musculoskeletal pain, this study identified six self‐reported psychosocial profiles that were not reducible to pain intensity alone. The findings support future validation of brief multidimensional intake assessment for profile‐informed stratified care.