Daily hope was linked to next-day quality of life in chronic pain

PURPOSE: Hope has been identified as a beneficial factor for enhancing quality of life (QoL), particularly for individuals with chronic disease, including chronic pain. However, significant gaps remain in understanding how hope and QoL intersect and relate to one another. The current study investigated whether daily hope frequency, defined as how often participants felt hopeful each day, can predict next-day QoL among individuals with chronic pain who are using cannabis and opioids to manage pain. METHODS: This was an observational study, approved by the Institutional Review Board of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (Protocol: IRB00009327). Participants (N = 132) using opioids and cannabis for chronic pain completed a baseline survey and 30-day daily diaries assessing hope frequency, QoL, and sleep satisfaction. Participants (mean age = 42.7, SD = 13.9) were predominantly male (58.3%) and Non-Hispanic White (63.6%). Linear mixed-effects models were used to test the lagged effects of daily hope frequency, decomposed into between- and within-person components, on next-day QoL, controlling for baseline variables, daily sleep satisfaction, and previous-day QoL. Intraindividual variabilities were also examined. RESULTS: Higher hope frequency was significantly associated with greater next-day QoL both between participants (i.e., participants with higher average hope reported higher QoL) and within participants (i.e., on days when hope was higher than a participant's own average), even after controlling for previous-day QoL and sleep satisfaction. While higher baseline hope and QoL scores were associated with higher average QoL over the 30-day period, intraindividual variability in hope was not significantly associated with QoL. CONCLUSIONS: Our daily diary study found that previous-day hope frequency - both stable individual differences and day-to-day fluctuations - was associated with next-day QoL in individuals with chronic pain who were co-using cannabis and opioids.