Psychology and chronic pain

McCracken, Lance M.

doi:10.1016/j.mpaic.2007.11.009

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Volume 9, Issue 2 , Pages 55-58, February 2008

Psychology and chronic pain

Lance M McCracken, PhD, is a Consultant Clinical Psychologist and Clinical Lead of the pain management Unit, Royal National Hospital for Rheumatic Diseases, Bath, UK. He completed his PhD in Clinical Psychology from West Virginia University and was a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. Before beginning work in Bath, he worked in the Departments of Psychiatry and Anesthesia and Critical Care at the University of Chicago

Abstract

Unfortunately for many sufferers, medical management alone is often not successful in alleviating chronic pain or in improving the emotional impacts and disability that come with it. The patients’ psychological experience of pain, the behaviour patterns they adopt, and the emotional, social, and cognitive influences on those behaviour patterns are critical in the management of many, if not most, cases. When pain has a significant impact on daily functioning, these parameters ought to be the central focus of treatment, and not be seen as secondary. This article presents a description of current psychological methods for the treatment of chronic pain, highlights some challenges of addressing psychological issues during a medical consultation, and notes that structured psychological approaches to chronic pain have a good record of success, whether these services are delivered by a single provider or by an interdisciplinary team of providers working from a cognitive–behavioural framework.

Keywords: cognitive–behavioural therapy, disability, psychological approaches, self-management