Back to basics about psychosocial factors in pain (i)

From time to time I see a flurry of tweets or Facebook posts about pain and psychosocial factors. Many of them are informative, intriguing and empathic, but some are just plain wrong. The ones I most get upset about are those arguing that because someone has “psychosocial factors” their pain must be psychological in origin, followed closely by the idea that psychosocial factors equate to psychopathology. This is a series of back to basics posts where I hope to set these things right. Pain, according to the current definition, is “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”[7] is derived from a 1964 definition by Harold Merskey,[8] and it was first published in 1979 by IASP in PAIN, number 6, page 250. An associated note, which should be read alongside this definition is: Note: The inability to communicate verbally does not negate the possibility that an individual is experiencing pain and is in need of appropriate pain-relieving treatment. Pain is always subjective. Each individual learns the application of the word through experiences related to injury in early life. Biologists recognize that those stimuli which cause pain are liable to damage tissue. Accordingly, pain is that experience we associate with actual or potential tissue damage. It is unquestionably a sensation in a part or parts of the body, but it is also always unpleasant and therefore also an e...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Pain Pain conditions Research Science in practice biopsychosocial Source Type: blogs