• Posted April 29, 2026

Mental Defeat Can Worsen Chronic Pain, Researchers Say

U.K. resident Fiona McNiven can tell you how chronic pain can wear a person down, as she spent more than three decades battling muscle and neuropathic pain.

“It completely overtook my life,” McNiven, 61, of Leeds, said in a news release. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever been through, and it affected my mood and confidence."

"I would catastrophize about the future and couldn’t see one — I didn’t believe a fulfilled life was possible with pain,” she said. “If you’re on your own, it can become completely overwhelming because you’ve got no energy and nothing to distract you.”

Unfortunately, the sort of mental defeat McNiven describes can actually make chronic pain even worse, locking people into a downward spiral of torment, a new study warns.

People who feel mentally defeated are more likely to focus on their pain, gradually losing their sense of self, researchers reported today in the journal Pain.

They start to withdraw from everyday activities, seeing their pain as an uncontrollable force damaging both their identity and their future, researchers said.

Targeting this sense of defeat might help people manage their pain, the team concluded.

“Pain is not something that can simply be taken away, it is someone’s reality,” lead researcher Nicole Tang, a professor of psychology at the University of Warwick in the U.K., said in a news release.

“But how people relate to their pain, and the meaning they attach to it, can add an extra layer of distress that we might be able target with the right interventions,” she said.

Chronic pain affects about 1 in 5 (20%) people, researchers said in background notes. It’s not just a physical condition: Psychological, emotional and behavioral factors shape a person’s experience with pain throughout their day-to-day life.

For the new study, 137 adults living with chronic pain filled out questionnaires capturing their thoughts, feelings and behaviors three times a day for two separate weeks.

“You can think of this method like a scientific stop-motion animation captured over a two-week period,” Tang said. “Each frame shows a snapshot of what someone is thinking, feeling or doing, but when you put them together, you can see how those experiences unfold and influence each other over time.”

Results showed that increases in a person’s feelings of mental defeat consistently predicted greater attention to pain.

People also were more likely to believe that pain was harming their identity, relationships and future, researchers found. Those perceptions, in turn, were linked to reduced physical activity.

The study also highlighted a self-reinforcing loop — feeling mentally defeated led to more negative self-perceptions, which further increased a person’s sense of mental defeat.

This could help explain why some people feel persistent pain-related distress even if their pain has been relatively stable, researchers said.

Mental defeat also appears to operate independently of a person’s pain intensity, stress or mood. Rather than being a byproduct of feeling worse, it appears to be a distinct psychological process that influences how a person experiences pain, researchers said.

Because of this, mental defeat could be a promising target for therapy, researchers said. People might be taught how to address these negative feelings, disrupting the pain/defeat cycle.

“By identifying when mental defeat spikes during the day, future digital tools, such as smartphone-based interventions, could deliver timely support to help individuals reframe negative self-perceptions, maintain activity and reduce suffering,” said senior researcher Swaran Singh, a professor of social and community psychiatry at the University of Warwick.

“This kind of ‘just-in-time’ approach could offer more personalized support alongside existing treatments,” he said.

More information

Mental Health America has more on chronic pain and mental health.

SOURCES: University of Warwick, news release, April 29, 2026; Pain, April 29, 2026