Is chronic pain a disease?

It was not until the twentieth century that pain was considered a disease. Before that it was managed medically as a symptom. The motivations for declaring chronic pain a disease, whether of the body or of the brain, include increasing its legitimacy as clinical problem and research focus worthy of attention from healthcare and research organizations alike. But one problem with disease concepts is that having a disease favors medical solutions and tends to reduce patient participation. We argue that chronic pain, particularly chronic primary pain (recently designated a first tier pain diagnosis in ICD 11), is a learned state that is not intransigent even if it has biological correlates.
Source: The Journal of Pain - Category: Materials Science Authors: Tags: Focus Article Source Type: research