Pain and Depression: A Comorbidity Conundrum | Pain Research Forum
Interest in pain is on the rise at the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), said Nora Volkow, chief of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, welcoming participants to the 9th Annual NIH Pain Consortium Symposium, held May 28-29, 2014, in Bethesda, US. Volkow noted a significant increase in research funding at the NIH for chronic pain conditions, which amounted to $400 million in 2014, up from $279 million in 2008. That is still just about 1 percent of the entire NIH pie, but in an era of shrinking budgets overall, that is no small progress.The increase follows the 2010 Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare), which ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - July 14, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
How to Talk About Pain - NYT
LONDON — IN 1926, Virginia Woolf published an essay on pain, "On Being Ill." Isn't it extraordinary, she observed, that pain does not rank with "love, battle and jealousy" among the most important themes in literature. She lamented the "poverty of the language of pain." Every schoolgirl who falls in love "has Shakespeare, Donne, Keats to speak her mind for her; but let a sufferer try to describe a pain in his head to a doctor and language at once runs dry." Where are the novels or epic poems devoted to typhoid, pneumonia or toothaches, Woolf wondered? Instead, the person in pain is forced to "coin words himself, and, ta...
Source: Psychology of Pain - July 13, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Prescription Rates For Painkiller Vary Widely By State : Shots - Health News : NPR
There's no getting around the fact that the abuse of prescription painkillers is a huge problem in the U.S. Prescription drug overdoses now kill more people each year than car crashes.
But the overdose risks vary quite a bit depending on where in the country you live. One reason is that how often doctors prescribed the drugs, such as Percocet, Vicodin and generic opioids, varies widely by state.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention analyzed a commercial database of drug prescriptions looking for patterns. Nationwide, there were 82.5 prescriptions written for opioid painkillers for every 100 Americans in 201...
Source: Psychology of Pain - July 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Common Back and Leg Pain Treatment May Not Help Much, Study Says - NYTimes.com
A widely used method of treating a common cause of back and leg pain — steroid injections for spinal stenosis — may provide little benefit for many patients, according to a new study that experts said should make doctors and patients think twice about the treatment.Hundreds of thousands of injections are given for stenosis each year in the United States, experts say, costing hundreds of millions of dollars.But the study, the largest randomized trial evaluating the treatment, found that patients receiving a standard stenosis injection — which combine a steroid and a local anesthetic — had no less pain and virtually ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - July 3, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
I don't feel your pain - Ideas - The Boston Globe
IF YOU STOPPED the average person in an emergency room and asked why she's there—not just her guess at the problem, but what really motivated her to show up—the number one answer would be "pain."
For all that modern medicine has learned about disease and treatment, it's alleviating pain that still lies at the heart of the profession. And in recent years, the notion of treating "pain" as its own entity has been rising to the forefront in medicine. Pain management now has its own journals, conferences, clinics, and specialists, and pain relief is sometimes referred to as a human right. The In...
Source: Psychology of Pain - June 18, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
NIH Pain Consortium’s first pain care curriculum improves clinical skills - NIH.gov
An online training module designed for the evaluation and care of chronic pain greatly improved medical student clinical skills, according to a report in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The module, built by the University of Pittsburgh and using an elderly woman with chronic lower back pain as a case study, is the first curriculum resource created through the efforts of the National Institutes of Health Pain Consortium's Centers of Excellence in Pain Education program (CoEPEs). The program was developed in response to the Affordable Care Act's mandate to advance the science, research, care and education of ...
Source: Psychology of Pain - June 6, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
A Move Toward Sex Equality in Preclinical Research | Pain Research Forum
Women suffer from chronic pain conditions in far greater numbers than do men, and recent research suggests that the basic biology of men's and women's experiences of pain might differ. Yet the overwhelming majority of basic pain studies are performed on male animals and male-derived cells. That is set to change, at least for researchers funded by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH), with new NIH guidelines mandating equal representation of both sexes in preclinical research. NIH director Francis Collins and Janine Clayton, director of the NIH's Office of Research on Women's Health, Bethesda, US, outlined the new pol...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 28, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Grand Unified Theory of Female Pain by Leslie Jamison | VQR Online
http://www.vqronline.org/essays-articles/2014/04/grand-unified-theory-female-pain (Source: Psychology of Pain)
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 27, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
‘The Empathy Exams,’ by Leslie Jamison - NYTimes.com
Regarding the pain of others requires more than just a pair of eyes. It necessitates an act of the imagination: a willingness to think or feel oneself into the interior of another's experience, to cross between what Susan Sontag once designated as the kingdoms of the sick and of the well. This kind of empathetic border crossing can be both difficult and dangerous, the sort of journey of which one might say: "I get across quickly because I'm headed in the right direction, by which I mean the wrong direction. I'm going where no one wants to stay."This statement, actually describing a trip i...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 27, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Genetic Switches Turn Off Pain - Forbes
This study is one of the first to examine the role of genetic and environmental factors in explaining the links between different chronic pain syndromes. The findings have clearly suggested that CPS may be heritable within families. With further research, these findings could then lead to therapies which may change the lives of those suffering with chronic pain.'
The presence of a possible genetic predisposition to CPS is also supported by similarities in symptoms and could explain why many sufferers have more than one of these kinds of diseases. Shared symptoms such as fatigue, memory loss, sleep disturbance are often...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 23, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Key genetic link between chronic pain conditions like IBS discovered - Kings College London
This study is one of the first to examine the role of genetic and environmental factors in explaining the links between different chronic pain syndromes. The findings have clearly suggested that CPS may be heritable within families. With further research, these findings could then lead to therapies which may change the lives of those suffering with chronic pain.'
The presence of a possible genetic predisposition to CPS is also supported by similarities in symptoms and could explain why many sufferers have more than one of these kinds of diseases. Shared symptoms such as fatigue, memory loss, sleep disturbance are often...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 23, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Doubts Raised About Off-Label Use of Subsys, a Strong Painkiller - NYTimes.com
Almost overnight, a powerful new painkiller has become a $100 million business and a hot Wall Street story.But nearly as quickly, questions are emerging about how the drug is being sold, and to whom.The drug, Subsys, is a form of fentanyl, a narcotic that is often used when painkillers like morphine fail to provide relief. The product was approved in 2012 for a relatively small number of people — cancer patients — but has since become an outsize moneymaker for the obscure company that makes it, Insys Therapeutics. In the last year, the company's sales have soared and its share price has jumped nearly 270 percent.B...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 14, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
Study examines back pain and depression in seniors - Senior's Health - Press of Atlantic City
Researchers at the Univ-ersity of Pittsburgh School of Medicine are studying the most effective means of treating chronic low back pain and symptoms of depression - together - in those 60 or older.The ADAPT (Addressing Depression And Pain Together) study has been going on for four years. Seventy-five men and 123 women, ranging in age from 60 to 94, have taken part.About a third of seniors suffer from low back pain. Nearly 20 percent of Americans age 65 and older have clinically significant symptoms of depression, according to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.Up to 25 percent of seniors may suffer from both, said Dr....
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 13, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
A Soldier’s War on Pain - NYTimes.com
Four years and a lifetime ago, a new war began for Sgt. Shane Savage.On Sept. 3, 2010, the armored truck he was commanding near Kandahar, Afghanistan, was blown apart by a roadside bomb. His head hit the ceiling so hard that his helmet cracked. His left foot was pinned against the dashboard, crushing 24 bones.Sergeant Savage came home eight days later, at age 27, with the signature injuries of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan: severe concussion, post-traumatic stress and chronic pain. Doctors at Fort Hood in Killeen, Tex., did what doctors across the nation do for millions of ordinary Americans: They prescribed p...
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 11, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
INvisible Project
The INvisible Project highlights the day-to-day experiences of pain survivors through photographs. These photographs capture the struggles and triumphs of these brave pain survivors. As the INvisible Project allows the outside world a glimpse of what it is like to live with pain while persistently pursuing to live a meaningful life, the goal of this project is to create pain awareness, empower survivors and generate change.
http://www.invisibleproject.org/ (Source: Psychology of Pain)
Source: Psychology of Pain - May 9, 2014 Category: Psychiatrists and Psychologists Source Type: blogs
