In this section:
Chronic pain is a pain that has persisted beyond the normal anticipated duration of recovery. For example, a broken bone or muscle strain is expected to recover within 6-8 weeks, but if you are still hurting and are unable to return to full normal function more than 3 months after the injury, it has become chronic pain.
But “delayed recovery” is not the only definition of chronic pain.
Here, it is not just about “the injury” any more. In chronic pain, the person who has become injured becomes an important factor.
“Who you are” plays a role here.
We call it the BIO-PSYCHO-SOCIAL MODEL OF CHRONIC PAIN.
“Who you are” is defined by your personality, your life, your relationships and your job; it is the totality of who you are.
Thus, each person is a unique human being and thus, everyone responds differently to pain and has different coping styles. This plays a significant role in development, perception and perpetuation of chronic pain.
Thus, chronic pain is not just about focusing treatment at the site of the injury, but treating the WHOLE PERSON, focusing on their overall health and fitness, life style and coping styles.
Chronic pain is impacted by your ability to handle and cope with pain. Has pain taken over your life or are you in control of your pain?
Factors that can put you at risk for developing chronic pain are:
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Past experience of pain
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Certain ethnic and cultural factors
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Secondary gain (getting rewarded for being disabled by pain)
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History of difficult childhood such as death, divorce or abuse.
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Substance or alcohol abuse history
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Marital problems
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Job dissatisfaction
These factors can become barriers to recovery. They do not necessarily mean that everyone with any of these issues will develop chronic pain. But physicians need to be on the lookout for these issues and address them sooner rather than later to prevent development of chronic pain.
In chronic pain, multiple areas of the brain interact together in the experience of pain. Pain can triggers past memories of pain and difficult times in the brain and this creates our psychological emotional response to the current situation. This creates out own individual and unique pain experience. So, you can see, how everyone responds to pain differently based on who they are and what their past experiences are.
How the brain integrates all this information has to be taken into account to understand and treat chronic pain.