Chronic Pain And Able Essay
Pain and Able: Chronic Pain and Mood Disorders
The ability to feel pain is something most people possess. It’s the body’s way of letting us know that something we are doing is damaging. Pain can range in intensity from annoying pain such as stubbing your toe to extreme pain such as child birth or kidney stone. We can all relate to these feelings of pain in one way or the other, but what happens when the pain doesn’t go away? When pain lingers on, it can affect many factors of a person’s life. There seems to be a correlation between chronic pain and levels of depression. Psychological factors such as depression and anxiety also seem to be indicators of how sever the pain is perceived as. Chronic pain can be described as pain that exists for 6 months after an injury, may be continuous or intermittent, and may be resistant to normal pain control methods. (Figueiredo, Griffith, 2016) There is also psychosomatic pain, such as phantom limb pain, which did not spring from an injury, but from factors in the brain that …show more content…
Whether it is organic or psychosomatic in nature it chips away at you. Since pain is our body’s way of telling us, “Hold up, that could damage us”, chronic pain keeps us in a constant vigilant state. This heightened state is very stressful when encountered for long periods of time, as we are in constant fear of more pain, or of making our injury or perceived injury worse. The National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association remarks that, “Feelings of helplessness, loss of control and interference with daily activities from chronic pain can trigger mental health disorders in some pain patients.” (http://www.fmcpaware.org/) In addition, it has been shown there is a positive correlation between depression and chronic pain. (Williams, Schäfer, 2016) (Costello, Bogue, Sarma, Mcguire, 2015) However, this may be because of several
The ability to feel pain is something most people possess. It’s the body’s way of letting us know that something we are doing is damaging. Pain can range in intensity from annoying pain such as stubbing your toe to extreme pain such as child birth or kidney stone. We can all relate to these feelings of pain in one way or the other, but what happens when the pain doesn’t go away? When pain lingers on, it can affect many factors of a person’s life. There seems to be a correlation between chronic pain and levels of depression. Psychological factors such as depression and anxiety also seem to be indicators of how sever the pain is perceived as. Chronic pain can be described as pain that exists for 6 months after an injury, may be continuous or intermittent, and may be resistant to normal pain control methods. (Figueiredo, Griffith, 2016) There is also psychosomatic pain, such as phantom limb pain, which did not spring from an injury, but from factors in the brain that …show more content…
Whether it is organic or psychosomatic in nature it chips away at you. Since pain is our body’s way of telling us, “Hold up, that could damage us”, chronic pain keeps us in a constant vigilant state. This heightened state is very stressful when encountered for long periods of time, as we are in constant fear of more pain, or of making our injury or perceived injury worse. The National Fibromyalgia and Chronic Pain Association remarks that, “Feelings of helplessness, loss of control and interference with daily activities from chronic pain can trigger mental health disorders in some pain patients.” (http://www.fmcpaware.org/) In addition, it has been shown there is a positive correlation between depression and chronic pain. (Williams, Schäfer, 2016) (Costello, Bogue, Sarma, Mcguire, 2015) However, this may be because of several