People with chronic pain are more likely to live in deprived areas, says a new report on prevalence of chronic pain in England, adding that people are more likely to have it if they are from minority ethnic communities while such pain is experienced more in women than men.
Highlighting that the impact of chronic pain is unequally felt across different groups in the UK, the report titled “Unfair, unequal and unseen”, published on Monday (28), claims that black and Asian people are more likely to report having high-impact chronic pain. The report is based on analysis of population health data collected by NHS Digital for the health survey in 2017 by Public Health England (PHE) and the charity Versus Arthritis.
Of sufferers, 30 per cent lived in deprived areas, whereas just 15 per cent lived in the best-off districts, the study said, adding that more women experience high-impact pain than men.
Published by Versus Arthritis, a charity working to support people with Arthritis, the report has also found that the number of people beset with the chronic pain remained steady between 2011 and 2017 at about 15.5 million but the proportion of people aged 16 to 34, affected by what experts call high-impact chronic pain, rose dramatically over that time from 21 per cent to 34 per cent.
Chronic pain is defined as pain that lasts more than 12 weeks despite treatment or medication. Most sufferers have arthritis or musculoskeletal conditions, such as gout and ankylosing spondylitis. Experts call high-impact chronic pain as pain so acute that it leaves the sufferer struggling to work, interact socially and look after themselves independently.
Prof John Newton, Public Health England’s (PHE) director of health improvement, who helped produce the report, said: “Since 2011 there appears to have been an alarming increase in high-impact chronic pain among young adults, which could change the life chances of a generation.”
He further added that long-term reliance on opioid drugs is increasingly recognised as not the best way to treat chronic serious pain and that “promoting physical activity and measures to address levels of obesity could reduce the number of people who experience chronic pain”.
Anti-Racism protesters come out in support of refugees outside the Cladhan Hotel on September 13, 2025 in Falkirk, Scotland. (Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images)