By Healthesystems
It’s no secret that chronic pain is an ongoing problem for injured workers. In our 2020 Workers’ Comp Industry Insights Survey, workers’ comp stakeholders ranked chronic pain as the most concerning health risk within claims populations. The prevalence of chronic pain is one of the reasons we featured this issue in our summer 2025 edition of RxInformer magazine. Since our publish date, several new insights about chronic pain have come to light.
Study Links Chronic Pain to Depression and Anxiety
Chronic pain has been linked to depression and anxiety for some time now – but until recently, newer studies have been scarce. That changed in March 2025, when the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study concluding that approximately 40% of adults with chronic pain had clinically significant depression and anxiety. The prevalences of depression and anxiety were highest among people with fibromyalgia, younger people, and women.
The study notes that “the co-occurrence of chronic pain with depression and anxiety is a significant public health concern” and suggests “routine screening in clinical settings, equitable access to specialty care, and innovative treatment development.” We mention some of the newer treatments for chronic pain in the above-mentioned RxInformer article, Paint Points: Chronic Pain and the Injured Worker.
Study Links Chronic Pain to People Living in Rural Areas
A second study published in June 2025 sheds light on yet another chronic pain link. Researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington found that people who live in rural areas are more likely to have chronic pain than those in urban settings. The study, published in the Journal of Rural Health, highlights the need to improve healthcare services in remote and rural areas for effective pain prevention and management.
Digital Therapy Helps to Retrain the Brain
In May 2025, UNSW Sydney and Neuroscience Research Australia (NeuRA) published research results showing that improving emotional processing in the brain can significantly reduce chronic pain. The researchers developed a new chronic pain treatment called Pain and Emotion Therapy, a digital health online therapy that helps retrain the brain to better handle emotions.
NeuRA tested the treatment with people experiencing chronic pain during a clinical trial in 2023 and 2024. Participants underwent group-based therapist-guided sessions by video conference and used an app and handbook. Those who received the treatment reported better emotional regulation as well as pain reduction equal to a 10-point decrease on a 100-point scale for pain intensity within a six-month follow-up.
Researchers Discover New Pain Pathway
In June 2025, researchers from the University of Aberdeen, Academia Sinica in Taiwan announced that they had found a new and distinct separate physiological pathway for chronic pain, proving that chronic pain is physiologically different from acute pain.
They discovered that a molecule called glutamate is released in muscles to activate a highly unusual receptor. Too much glutamate release activates pain nerves, making them permanently active and not switch off as they normally would. This finding could lead to new pain relief treatments, as blocking the newly discovered glutamate receptor entirely would stop the chronic pain from being triggered.
