Article

The aim of this qualitative study was to explore participants'
perspectives on the effects of chronic pain on the psychophysical unity. METHODS:
Thirty-four chronic pain outpatients were interviewed, and the transcribed
interviews were analysed with Giorgi's four-phase phenomenological method.
The mean age of the participants was 48 years, and 19 of them were women. For 21 of
the participants, the pain duration was more than 5 years, and most had
degenerative spinal pain. RESULTS: The results of this whole research project
indicated that the phenomenon chronic pain consisted of four essential themes:
Pain affects the whole person, invisibility, negativity, and dominance of pain.
This study concentrates only on one theme "Chronic pain affects the whole
person", in which were found eight subthemes in the interviews.
The strongest
argument made by the participants was not the physical pain itself but the
psychosocial consequences, such as distress, loneliness, lost identity, and low
quality of life which were their main problems. CONCLUSIONS: In multidisciplinary
holistic rehabilitation, it is essential to take care of the patient's
psychological distress. A potential source of psychosocial symptoms may be the
subjective responses to experience of chronic pain due to the subjective meanings
of pain. Implications for Rehabilitation About chronic pain Pain is an
experience, not only an aversive sensation. Intensity of pain describes only the
sensation, not the experience of pain. In chronic pain, the main complaint may be
not the physical pain, but the distress. In rehabilitation, the patient needs to
be taken as a whole person. Multidisciplinary rehabilitation, including patient
counselling should be the fundamental part of treatment. In rehabilitation, the
individual meaning of chronic pain needs to be disclosed.

Langue : ANGLAIS