Pain: What It Is and What to Do About It


Most people think that pain is purely physical. The more severe an injury, the worse it hurts. But according to this article, the experience of pain is determined by three different things: physical, psychological, and social and factors. For example, teaching people to cope with pain using skills such as relaxation can lead to them experiencing less pain. People who have higher self-efficacy are also more confident in their ability to cope with pain, and so they experience less pain. In terms of social factors that affect the experience of pain, the article talks about research that showed that when people’s spouses were taught how to help their partner cope with pain, the partner ended up feeling less pain. The authors argue that the health care system should recognize that pain is determined by these three factors and should change the way it treats pain. Rather than waiting until people are disabled by pain before teaching coping skills, coping skills could be taught to people earlier. Attempts could also be made to change how people think about their pain, too.

One of the really interesting things in this article was the description of how physical changes in the brain and spinal cord affect the experience of pain. The article talked briefly about how phantom limb pain seems to be caused by changes in the brain after an amputation, which is also discussed in the book. Neurons in a part of the brain called the somatosensory cortex that used to respond to stimulation of an arm, for example, might eventually start responding to stimulation of a person’s face if their arm is amputated. The article also talks about changes that happen in the spinal cord when an animal experiences on-going pain, which the book does not talk about. According to the article, if an animal experiences an intense pain, it will later respond in an exaggerated way to something else painful, as if it actually hurts more. This is apparently due to a change in the spinal cord. The book talks...