The current study tested whether daily interpersonal events predicted fatigue from one day to the next among female chronic pain patients.
Self-reported fatigue, daily events, pain, sleep quality, depressive symptoms, and functional health across 30 days were assessed in women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA: n = 89), Osteoarthritis (OA: n = 76), and Fibromyalgia syndrome (FM: n = 90).
Self-report fatigue measured on a 0 to 100 scale and fatigue affect from PANAS-X (Watson & Clark, 1994).
Multilevel analyses showed that both higher average levels of and daily increases in negative events predicted more fatigue, whereas daily increases in positive events predicted less fatigue. Across all pain conditions, increases in negative events continued to predict higher fatigue on the following day. Moreover, for participants with FM or RA, increases in positive events also predicted increased fatigue the following day. Daily increases in fatigue, in turn, predicted poorer functional health on both the same day and the next day.
These results indicate that both on average and on a daily basis, interpersonal events influence levels of fatigue beyond common physical and psychological correlates of chronic pain and highlight differences between chronic pain groups.