Chronic Pain
"a continuous, long-term pain of more than 12 weeks or after the time that healing would have been thought to have occurred in pain after trauma or surgery" (British Pain Society - http://www.britishpainsociety.org/media_faq.htm)
It is estimated that only 3-10% of all low back pain presentations will progress to chronic status however despite this small minority it accounts for nearly half of the total resources allocated in the treatment of all low back pain. Over the last 2 decades clinicians and researchers have completely altered the way in which this complex presentation is both understood and perceived. This has resulted in many new and varied treatments available to the chronic pain patient and many of them are not medical in the traditional sense. For some, the notion of a pain without a 'fixable' physical cause can be hard to understand, or accept, so we hope that the following information and links will go some way to addressing this.
Medicine has been historically built around what we call a biomedical framework. This basically implies that for everything that we have wrong with us, there has to be a physical or an organic cause. The fact of the matter is that over the last two decades, increasing amounts of compelling research regarding our understanding of pain and rehabilitation is telling a very different story. Unfortunately, this belief is still widely held by much of the public (and some of the professionals!) and can cause difficult patient/professional situations when investigations come back ‘clear’, despite the pain still being present.
Psychosocial components allow us a whole new dimension in the understanding of medicine, accepting the key roles that both the psychological and environmental factors can play in recovery. There is, without doubt, a significant stigma attached to any medical phraseology containing the word ‘psych‘, the most common misconception being that there may be ‘a little madness‘ involved. This couldn't be further from the truth however (in most cases) and helping you to understand why this is can be one of the hardest tasks we have to undertake. The ironic thing is that most of you will be able to relate to many psychosocial factors, just without knowing it.
1) Did you panic and over react to your symptoms? |
Examples of this may be:
1) 1) You still worry greatly about the symptoms you had – you may still dress in a certain way not because it hurts but just in case the socks are a stretch too far, or maybe you still walk with a limp because that used to help. |
I would encourage you all at this stage to take the time to read the Psychosocial, Cognitive Behaviour Therapy and Functional Restoration pages, and educate yourself on this area which for a select few may be vital to your long term recovery. Food for thought is that it is not uncommon for those of you who think you are exempt from these conditions, to be the very ones who may be the most susceptible!
The following two short videos come highly recommended by EMS and I am sure all of you with chronic pain who have not already seen these will benefit.
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