Health beliefs related to willingness to accept treatment of pain with potentially addictive drugs

Abstract

PurposeAlmost 40 years after Zborowski in People in Pain demonstrated that cultural orientations underlie reactions to pain and willingness to accept treatment, and despite documented high US prevalence rates for acute and chronic pain, little is known about health beliefs regarding pain. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how health beliefs toward pain may influence willingness to approve pain treatment with potentially addictive drugs.Design/methodology/approachUsing 633 randomly sampled, general population telephone interviewed respondents from the southern region of the USA, this paper used difference of means and multiple regression analyses to investigate 11 health beliefs toward pain and their relationship to willingness to accept medical treatment with potentially addictive drugs.FindingsThe paper demonstrates that six of the 11 health beliefs about pain have statistically significant relationships to willingness to approve medical treatment for oneself with potentially addictive pain medications.Originality/valueThese health beliefs may prove useful in social marketing programs and in practitioner‐patient communications in clinical settings with the objective of enhancing patients' receptivity to approved medical treatment regimes that involve the use of potentially addictive medications for pain relief.