The McGill Pain Questionnaire, also known as McGill pain index, is a scale of rating pain developed at the McGill University in Montreal, Canada. It was shown to be a valid and reliable tool to investigate pain and has been in use since 1971. There are many subsections to the questionnaire to help the examiner or health care professional get to the bottom of what hurts, how much it hurts, and potentially, why it hurts.
To use the basic questionnaire, the patient circles the words that best describe his or her pain. There are 20 groups of words to choose from with choices like throbbing, shooting, scalding, and dull or sore. The first category includes words that describe pain of a vascular (blood vessel) nature. For example, if you have a throbbing or pounding headache, it may be coming from too much blood in the brain.
The second set of word descriptors form seven of the categories and describe neurogenic (nerve pain). Words like tingling, itching, hot, or burning suggest a neurogenic source of pain. One section is devoted to musculoskeletal pain including words like dull, aching, sore, or heavy.
That leaves 10 full categories of words that suggest an emotional response to pain. It doesn’t mean you don’t have pain. It just means the interpretation of the pain (especially pain intensity) is influenced by certain emotions. Some of the words in this category are fearful, sickening, tiring-exhausting, or punishing-cruel. You might describe your pain as miserable, torturing, or unbearable. Again, these words suggest what is referred to as an affective (emotional) base.
The mind-body connection is a powerful link in any kind of chronic pain condition. Having this information can be very helpful in planning a treatment approach that will give you the best results. The McGill Pain Questionnaire is just one of many tools that can be used to uncover underlying emotions, thoughts, and beliefs that are tied into our pain and dis-ease.