As per the findings of a study published in the spine journal, low resilience and low pain self-efficacy are inversely correlated with greater functional disability in the neck and low back pain patients.

It is well established that psychosocial risk factors may lead to an increase in the progression of back and neck pain to chronic pain or disability. Among these psychometric properties, resilience and pain self-efficacy are proved to affect health and illness. Resilience can be defined as the potential to recover from stress whereas pain self-efficacy can be defined as the ability of an individual to perform daily activities in pain-free state.

Although these two fundamental psychometric properties were related to pain perception, little is known about the relationship between these factors and spine-specific patient-reported outcomes

The present prospective study was conducted to demonstrate the correlation among resilience, pain self-efficacy, and disability in the spine patients. This study was set in single-centre orthopaedic spine clinic in which 195 patients complaining of neck pain or low back pain, with or without radiculopathy participated who were recruited between December 2016 - March 2017. Self-reported efficacy measures such as Brief Resilience Scale (BRS), The Neck Disability Index (NDI), Pain Self-Efficacy Questionnaire 2 (PSEQ-2) Short Form, and Oswestry Disability Index (ODI) were included in the study. The enrolled patients finished a survey of demographic information; the 2-question PSEQ-2 Short Form, the 6-question BRS and NDI or ODI for neck or back pain. The association between PSEQ-2 and NDI or ODI  and also BRS and NDI or ODI was assessed.

Among 190 patients, only 180 patients were included in the analysis after excluding those with incomplete NDI or ODI.  Low back pain and neck pain was reported by 77.2% and 22.8% of the population respectively. There was a significant correlation found between PSEQ-2 and ODI when compared with the association between BRS and ODI for the low back pain patients. These differences were not observed in the neck pain patients.

"Spine surgeons may find it helpful to incorporate the BRS and PSEQ-2 into a preoperative assessment." The authors suggested.