We found no effect of FH, but a significant effect of depression, on the ability of sweets to reduce pain in children. Consistent with previous findings [5], NDEP children sustained the pain of cold water for longer when they had sucrose in the mouth. The more intense the concentration of sucrose the child preferred, the better it worked as an analgesic. This is in marked contrast to that observed in PDEP children: not only was sucrose an ineffective analgesic, they also had a lower tolerance for pain in general. Such findings are consistent with a recent study on pre-adolescent girls indicating that the number of depressive symptoms was related inversely to pain tolerance during the cold pressor test [64].
