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| Home, About Us, Our Staff, Patient Services, Psychiatric Terms Explained, Geriatric Psychiatry, General Psychiatry, F.A.Q., Drugless Treatment, What's New?,Job Opportunities, Contact Us |
Revitalizing Psychiatry
Pain Management
Chronic Pain - Are drugs the only solution for you?
Studies suggest that roughly half of Americans with chronic or recurrent pain simply do not find a good
treatment solution. In fact, chronic pain is a leading cause of lost workdays. It costs the nation an
estimated $100 billion in lost productivity and increased health care, not to mention immeasurable
suffering.
This need not be so. As shown in Time magazine article "The Right (and Wrong) Way to Treat Pain",
perhaps the biggest reason so many patients suffer more than they should is the tendency among doctors
and patients alike to see pain as a mere sideshow - a vexing side effect of arthritis, a herniated disc,
cancer or trauma -rather than what it is: a serious and consequential health issue in its own right.
Chronic pain must be attacked on many fronts. Drugs are important, but they are just one weapon in the
arsenal. Studies have shown that patients who use a multidisciplinary pain management program do
better than patients who take medications only. The anxiety, the depression, the hopelessness that come
with chronic pain really all have to be addressed - as do the loss of mobility, hypersensitivity to touch and
other effects that can destroy the quality of life. It's not as if you can just take an anti-inflammatory drug
and all those problems go away.
The four main elements of multidisciplinary pain management programs are drugs; injection therapies
(nerve blocks like epidurals); physical therapy and exercise; and behavioral techniques that include
relaxation training, biofeedback and psychotherapy.
At our Center we use multidisciplinary and holistic approach for
treatment of chronic pain:
- Our doctors do comprehensive evaluation of the patient, looking at the
individual as the whole.
- Osteopathic doctors affiliated with us provide pain management medication,
injection therapies and osteopathic manipulative therapy.
- Our psychiatrists address medical management of anxiety and depression
often associated with chronic pain.
- Our psychotherapists will use behavioral approach to significantly reduce your
chronic pain and make you stronger with help of deep breathing exercises,
relaxation training, biofeedback and psychotherapy.
Patients who learn to deal with their anxiety or depression and reduce their pain with breathing exercises,
relaxation therapy or biofeedback can often manage their pain with lower or only intermittent doses of
drugs, reducing the risks of side effects that come with every pain-killer.
What causes chronic pain?
Before you can give pain the treatment it deserves, you have to understand what it is and why we have it.
Nasty though it is, pain plays a valuable role in our overall health. Doctors liken it to an alarm system for the
body. When skin, cartilage, muscle or other tissue is injured, peripheral nerves in the area send a
shrieking signal to the spinal cord and brain. The immediate result, usually processed in the spinal cord:
you pull your hand away from the stove, you shift your weight off the broken bone, you sit down. All pain
signals ultimately land in the brain, where they trigger thought ("That was dumb!"), emotions (tears, sobs),
memories and a complex array of biochemical events aimed at protecting your body from further harm.
With chronic pain, however, the alarm continues to shriek uselessly long after the physical danger has
passed. Somewhere along the line - maybe near the initial injury, maybe in the spinal cord or brain - the
alarm system has broken down. What researchers have only recently come to understand is that
prolonged exposure to this screaming siren actually does its own damage. Pain causes a fundamental
rewiring of the nervous system. Each time we feel pain, there are changes that occur that tend to amplify
our experience of pain. That is why it is a mistake, despite our grin-and-bear-it tradition, to ignore or
undertreat severe pain.
We work together with your primary care physician
We strongly believe that you should not be alone in the struggle with your chronic pain. It should be fought
and cured by combined efforts of all forces: your primary care physician, pain management specialists
and mental health professionals. We work closely with other medical professionals to make sure we
provide the best possible treatment for you.
Studies suggest that roughly half of Americans with chronic or recurrent pain simply do not find a good
treatment solution. In fact, chronic pain is a leading cause of lost workdays. It costs the nation an
estimated $100 billion in lost productivity and increased health care, not to mention immeasurable
suffering.
This need not be so. As shown in Time magazine article "The Right (and Wrong) Way to Treat Pain",
perhaps the biggest reason so many patients suffer more than they should is the tendency among doctors
and patients alike to see pain as a mere sideshow - a vexing side effect of arthritis, a herniated disc,
cancer or trauma -rather than what it is: a serious and consequential health issue in its own right.
Chronic pain must be attacked on many fronts. Drugs are important, but they are just one weapon in the
arsenal. Studies have shown that patients who use a multidisciplinary pain management program do
better than patients who take medications only. The anxiety, the depression, the hopelessness that come
with chronic pain really all have to be addressed - as do the loss of mobility, hypersensitivity to touch and
other effects that can destroy the quality of life. It's not as if you can just take an anti-inflammatory drug
and all those problems go away.
The four main elements of multidisciplinary pain management programs are drugs; injection therapies
(nerve blocks like epidurals); physical therapy and exercise; and behavioral techniques that include
relaxation training, biofeedback and psychotherapy.
At our Center we use multidisciplinary and holistic approach for
treatment of chronic pain:
- Our doctors do comprehensive evaluation of the patient, looking at the
individual as the whole.
- Osteopathic doctors affiliated with us provide pain management medication,
injection therapies and osteopathic manipulative therapy.
- Our psychiatrists address medical management of anxiety and depression
often associated with chronic pain.
- Our psychotherapists will use behavioral approach to significantly reduce your
chronic pain and make you stronger with help of deep breathing exercises,
relaxation training, biofeedback and psychotherapy.
Patients who learn to deal with their anxiety or depression and reduce their pain with breathing exercises,
relaxation therapy or biofeedback can often manage their pain with lower or only intermittent doses of
drugs, reducing the risks of side effects that come with every pain-killer.
What causes chronic pain?
Before you can give pain the treatment it deserves, you have to understand what it is and why we have it.
Nasty though it is, pain plays a valuable role in our overall health. Doctors liken it to an alarm system for the
body. When skin, cartilage, muscle or other tissue is injured, peripheral nerves in the area send a
shrieking signal to the spinal cord and brain. The immediate result, usually processed in the spinal cord:
you pull your hand away from the stove, you shift your weight off the broken bone, you sit down. All pain
signals ultimately land in the brain, where they trigger thought ("That was dumb!"), emotions (tears, sobs),
memories and a complex array of biochemical events aimed at protecting your body from further harm.
With chronic pain, however, the alarm continues to shriek uselessly long after the physical danger has
passed. Somewhere along the line - maybe near the initial injury, maybe in the spinal cord or brain - the
alarm system has broken down. What researchers have only recently come to understand is that
prolonged exposure to this screaming siren actually does its own damage. Pain causes a fundamental
rewiring of the nervous system. Each time we feel pain, there are changes that occur that tend to amplify
our experience of pain. That is why it is a mistake, despite our grin-and-bear-it tradition, to ignore or
undertreat severe pain.
We work together with your primary care physician
We strongly believe that you should not be alone in the struggle with your chronic pain. It should be fought
and cured by combined efforts of all forces: your primary care physician, pain management specialists
and mental health professionals. We work closely with other medical professionals to make sure we
provide the best possible treatment for you.
