To analyze the current status, hotspots and frontiers of pain catastrophizing at home and abroad from 2012 to 2022, so as to provide reference for research on pain catastrophizing in China.

Article retrieval were conducted on the Web of Science, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WanFang Data and VIP using the Chinese and English keywords "pain catastrophizing". The search period was from January 1, 2012 to August 24, 2022. The articles were analyzed using the CiteSpace software.

A total of 2036 English articles and 83 Chinese articles were included. The overall number of articles was increasing year by year, with the countries and institutions with the highest publication volume being the United States and the University of Washington. Research hotspots at home and abroad included pain, low back pain, quality of life, influencing factors, anxiety, depression, joint replacement, scale validation, kinesiophobia and so on.

The research on pain catastrophizing abroad is increasingly receiving widespread attention, while domestic research is still in its infancy. Domestic researchers can use various methods to explore the occurrence and influencing factors of pain catastrophizing among different disease groups in China, deeply explore the mechanism of pain catastrophizing, and focus on the correlation between pain catastrophizing and exercise rehabilitation outcomes to help patients cope with pain.

Pain; Pain catastrophization; Bibliometrics; Visualization analysis