Pain is a mysterious thing. Despite having fully healed from injury, many people continue to experience pain. When it lasts three months or more, it’s described as “chronic pain” and doctors are starting to believe it’s a separate condition from the injury that might have caused it. Certainly, doctors take a different approach with chronic pain. Short-term pain is usually addressed with pain killers. But over prescription of these has led to the ‘opioid crisis’ gripping the USA and spilling to other countries.
Stemming from the belief that chronic pain is caused by a constantly shifting combination of biological, psychological and social factors, doctors treat pain management as a multifaceted challenge. And while biology and psychology are — relatively — straightforward to tackle, adjusting social factors is far more difficult.
One of the more pernicious social factors are myths. The myth that newborns don’t feel pain led to infants having open heart surgery without anaesthetic. As recently as 2015, the myth that babies don’t feel pain was still being dispelled.
