Chronic Pain and Emotional Health
Sunday January 22, 2006
Ever wonder why feeling depressed and/or anxious is so inseparably intertwined with chronic pain? And no, the pain is NOT all in your head, either. There are physiological reasons why chronic pain sufferers experience depression, anxiety and stress. Let's take a tour of the way the nervous system processes pain and find out how this all works...
Comments
I’m glad more people are talking about the connection between the emotional and the physical. For too long, Western medicine has treated the mind as a separate entity from the body, and discounting the profound effects a positive attitude can have on healing and overall wellness. I work with a few pain management physicians near Sacramento, California who combine physical therapies with a deeper understanding of the psychology of pain. I hope that more people living with chronic pain can find doctors in their area who offer this “whole person” approach, rather than just prescribing medicine or performing treatments that offer nothing but temporary relief.
Thanks for your comment, Matt. I couldn’t agree more. Maybe that’s one reason why so many people are still walking (or not) around with so much pain, even after going through the clinical route.