The Enduring Mystery of Pain in a Social Context

Chronic pain has become a health epidemic, with one in five U.S. adults suffering from chronic pain and an estimated annual cost of $560 billion in medical care, lost productivity, or disability services [1]. Understanding pain has never been more crucial. Our current biopsychosocial understanding of pain explicitly recognizes the important role of the social dimension in explaining pain  [2], and recently, it was proposed to update the official definition of pain to explicitly mention that pain encompasses not only sensory, emotional, and cognitive components but also social ones [3].
Source: Journal of Adolescent Health - Category: Child Development Authors: Tags: Editorial Source Type: research