Pain, Chronic Pain, and Chronic Illnesses

Pain on Centre Stage

The Pain and Research page puts it well:

In 1931, the French medical missionary Dr. Albert Schweitzer wrote, "Pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself." Today, pain has become the universal disorder, a serious and costly public health issue, and a challenge for family, friends, and health care providers who must give support to the individual suffering from the physical as well as the emotional consequences of pain.

If you are in pain for some or all of your waking hours, if pain is permanently in the foreground of your attention, it puts something of a different context around everything else. It may become the primary focus of life, and developing coping strategies may become essential to enjoying a fulfilling existence.

Therapy and Chronic Pain or Illness

Counselling or therapy can play a beneficial role in the overall coping strategy for individuals suffering from arthritis, back pain, chronic fatigue syndrome, and the other conditions described here. That overall strategy will often include treatment by a physician, medication, and perhaps even surgery. But in some cases, counselling or other psychological support is specifically recommended -- for example, cognitive behavioural therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome or CBT or other counselling for irritable bowel syndrome. Counselling may also be of some help in addressing the depression which so often accompanies chronic pain or illness.

So, in contrast to the other subsections within Types of Distress, which cover anxiety disorders and mood disorders, this subsection focuses on medical ailments which are not in and of themselves a main focus of the mental health profession -- but which will nonetheless be of concern both to counsellors and psychotherapists and to millions of sufferers around the world.

What Types of Chronic Pain or Illness Are Covered?

Separate sections address: