OBJECTIVE: To analyze the relationship between chronic pain and painprone meutal disorders and investigate the effect of psychological intervention and medication.DATA SOURCES: Related literatures about the relationship between chronic pain and pain-prone mental disorders were searched on computer in Medline and Embase from January 1989 to May 2004 with the retrieval word of "Chronic pain, emotional disorder, treatment", the language was limited to English. The subjects were patients who suffered from chronic pain for above 6 months.STUDY SELECTION: Related literatures about the relationship between chronic pain and pain-prone mental disorders and its therapeutic interventions were carried on primary trial to delete those obsolete and repetitive literatures, and the others were used to search in the full text. The quality was appraised mainly on the basis of the data authenticity, preciseness of the designation, strictness of the implementation and reasonability of the statistical analysis.DATA EXTRACTION: Altogether 20 literatures were obtained and 11literatures were proved accordant with the inclusion standard. 9 literatures were excluded because 7 were repetitive experiments and two were Meta analyses.DATA SYNTHESIS: 11 literatures include experimental group and control group, patients in the experimental group were treated with analgetic combined with psychological intervention and antidepressant while those in the control group were only given analgetic; the outcomes of the two groups were compared.CONCLUSION: Chronic pain may co-exist with emotional disorders. It can be remarkably alleviated by the administration of analgetic combined with psychological intervention and antidepressant, which proves better than single analgetic medication.