Past Pain Experience and Perception of Experimental Pain

Differences in pain perception between subjects with and without psychiatric illness may be influenced by the individual experience, and not primarily by the pathology, although the pathological frame may amplify it.The aim of this study is to establish if the characteristics of experimental pain feeling are influenced by the past pain experience, anxiety and emotion, independently from the diagnosis. The pain experience will be evaluated by an inventory of the potentially painful situations that one can come across through the life, to determine the following points : Number of painful events in the past, number of painful points during the last 6 months, number of painful events lasting more than 6 months, sum of pain intensities (graduated with Visual Analogic Scale VAS from 0 to 10), sum of gravity (evaluated from 0 to 5), the category of pain experience qualification (mostly affective, mostly sensorial, or both). Schizophrenic, depressed and control participants will be recruited, and their pain experience throughout life will be put it in relation to experimental pain tests results (pressure application, ischemia induction), anxiety and emotion (Hospital Anxiety and Depression scale HAD), catastrophizing (Pain Catastrophizing Scale PCS), Heart Rate (HR) variation, Blood Pressure (BP) variation.