Living with pain is social: The Chronic Pain Couple book review

Over the past year or so I’ve kept returning to ‘the social’ part of our multifactorial pain experience.* Pain can be extraordinarily isolating, and our current sociopolitical emphasis maintains a focus on ‘what the individual should do.’ In New Zealand, our accident compensation legislation is a no-fault, 24/7 everywhere, all-the-time innovation but it falls short in critical areas. One is the continued focus on ‘physical findings’ to validate a diagnosis (and to show that the resultant impact on an individual is entirely due to a personal injury caused by accident), and the other is the attention only to the person who has sustained the injury. The focus on individuals has led us to therapy for chronic pain targeting outcomes such as returning to work, independence in the home, and reducing the cost of compensation. Important outcomes, believe me. But what hasn’t been fostered nearly as much is – relationships, intimacy, whanau, interdependence, joy and meaning in therapy. This has left a huge gap for people living with pain who may not have very much attention paid to their relationship with their loved ones. And bringing your partner/lover into therapy? Yeah nah. Let’s just say that New Zealanders are a reserved bunch. Karra Eloff writes from her own experience and the wisdom of a lot of research in her book The Chronic Pain Couple. Karra lives with chronic pain (spondyloarthritis) so she’s informed...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Chronic pain Coping strategies Professional topics Health pain management Therapeutic approaches Source Type: blogs