[Chronic pain and the belief in self-efficacy].

The treatment of chronic pain patients includes beliefs, attitudes, values and behavior modifications. Dysfunctional beliefs about pain and management can become the central problem and determine the treatment's outcome. Among the important beliefs for the management of chronic pain, self-efficacy deserves to be highlighted. The concept of self-efficacy, developed by Bandura, is the belief on the individual ability to perform successfully certain tasks or behaviors in order to produce a desired outcome. This study is a critical review of the literature on the belief of self-efficacy related to chronic pain and about the methods to assess self-efficacy. Studies listed in Medline (1992 to 2002), Lilacs and Dedalus (the entire databases) were analyzed. The key words were pain and self-efficacy, dor and auto-eficácia.