Brief Description
The Pain Catastrophizing Scale (PCS) assesses the extent of catastrophic thinking due to pain according to 3 subscales: rumination, magnification, and helplessness. The PCS was developed to help quantify an individual's pain experience, asking about how they feel and what they think about when they are in pain. Compared to other ways of measuring pain-related thoughts, this questionnaire is unique in that the individual does not need to be in pain while completing it. Pain catastrophizing occurs when a person exaggerates the threat of pain and exaggerates their helplessness in relation to the presence of pain, preventing pain, or preventing pain-related thoughts. The PCS measures this experience. Respondents rate how often they have the catastrophic thoughts listed (e.g., “I worry all the time about whether the pain will end”) when they experience pain on a scale from “Not at all” to “All the time.”
Assessment Administration Type
Self-report
Number of questions
13
Age Range for Administration
18+
Recommended Frequency of Administration
No standardized frequency; recommend administering every other week or as clinically indicated.
Summary of Scoring and Interpretations
The PCS contains 13 questions scored on a 5-point Likert scale with values from 0 (“Not at all”) to 4 (“All the time”). A total score is calculated by summing the item responses and ranges from 0 to 52; higher scores are associated with higher levels of pain catastrophizing. A total score above 30 indicates a clinically relevant level of catastrophizing. The PCS also has three subscales (helplessness, magnification, and rumination), and subscale scores are calculated by summing the scores of all items within each subscale. See the table below for the 3 subscales, associated items, and clinically significant scores.
Subscale | Items | Clinically significant scores |
Helplessness | 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 12 | 13+ |
Magnification | 6, 7, 13 | 5+ |
Rumination | 8, 9, 10, 11 | 11+ |
Blueprint Adjustments
N/A
Clinical Considerations
Estimated completion time: 3-5 minutes
The Pain Catastrophizing Scale for Children (PCS-C) is an adaptation of the adult PCS for ages 8-17, which assesses catastrophic thoughts and feelings about pain on similar domains as the PCS (i.e., helplessness, rumination, and magnification) - PSC-C validation paper here.
Research shows that catastrophizing not only contributes to heightened levels of pain and emotional distress but also increases the probability that the pain condition will persist over an extended period of time. Findings suggest that if catastrophic thinking can be minimized, then the probability of the persistence of pain and disability might be reduced.
Citation
Relevant Articles + Further Resources
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