A high prevalence of musculoskeletal symptom was
found to be associated with high psychologic distress for
high school students,12 especially for the neck and back
regions. Cagnie et al23 also found that there were significant
associations between neck pain and some psychologic
distress factors (such as mental tiredness at the end of the
work day and shortage of personnel) among a group of
computer workers. The current study found that the
participants with high psychologic distress tended to have
higher symptom scores and symptom frequencies for all
regions (except the wrist area) than those in the low distress
group. Using bivariate analysis, high psychologic distress
was significantly associated with shoulder and upper back
pain. Hoyle et al24 showed that prolonged work stress
might facilitate the development of a myofascial trigger
point on the trapezius, whereas Janwantanakul et al21 found
high prevalence of lower back pain among general office
workers, although they did not differentiate between the
upper and lower back. Therefore, high psychologic distress,
as assessed by the CHQ, appears to be an important
contributing factor related to the musculoskeletal symptoms
of this group of computer users.