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How do you talk to your partner about your pain? Or don’t you talk about it? A new study investigates the reasons why people talk or don’t talk about their pain. One of the co-investigators talks about the background for the study and how you can participate:

“One of the hardest things about living with chronic pain is talking to others about your pain. And this can be especially challenging in your relationship with your partner or spouse. A study currently seeking participants aims to identify the goals behind why people communicate — or don’t communicate — about their pain to their partner. Earlier this week, I spoke to co-investigator Somayyeh Mohammadi, Ph.D., about the study.

Dr. Mohammadi studied for a doctorate degree in the Netherlands and is now working in Canada. She has a background of working in the field of chronic pain, primarily focusing on “the relationship between patients with chronic pain and their partners and main family caregivers.” She is particularly interested in “how family and caregivers can impact the chronicity of the pain or how pain and living with an individual with chronic pain can impact the health of the other person.”

She’s currently doing postdoctoral work in Halifax, Canada, with a focus on two areas. One is “pediatric pain and the impact of parental pain on the children’s well-being.” Secondly, Dr. Mohammadi is working on a study on pain communication at the Couples and Sexual Health Research Laboratory in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Dalhousie University in Halifax. The focus of this research, which is led by Natalie Rosen, Ph.D., is to investigate “why some individuals with chronic pain decide to communicate their pain to their partners and why some decide not to.””

Read the rest of the interview and learn how you can participate in the study on HealthCentral.