Psych issues common in knee and shoulder injuries: study

September 22, 2025

Psychosocial factors such as fear of movement, poor coping skills, and low mood play a strong role in the recovery from knee and shoulder injuries, according to findings of a study released Thursday by the Workers Compensation Research Institute.

The study, which used data from 65,000 episodes each of knee and shoulder physical therapy from 2021 to 2024, found that psychosocial risk factors are “widespread” among injured workers with knee and shoulder injuries, and are associated with “poorer functional recovery.”

Among shoulder-injury patients, 46% reported high levels of negative coping and 32% had high levels of fear avoidance; for knee-injury patients, those percentages were similar at 42% and 31%. For both injury classifications, 8% reported bad moods.