Unemployment, Chronic Pain and Depression Can Be Inextricably Connected

After relationship difficulties, unemployment is the most likely thing to push someone into a bad depression. This isn’t surprising, since work is often a significant source of an individual’s sense of worth and self-esteem. For many, depression first shows up in physical symptoms, such as headaches, gastrointestinal distress, and sexual dysfunction.

The A to Z of Pain

In its most benign form, pain warns us that something isn't quite right, that we should take medicine or see a doctor. At its worst, however, pain robs us of our productivity, our well-being, and, for many of us suffering from extended illness, our very lives. Pain is a complex perception that differs enormously among individual patients, even those who appear to have identical injuries or illnesses.

A Pain Primer: What Do We Know About Pain?

Pain is a complicated process that involves an intricate interplay between a number of important chemicals found naturally in the brain and spinal cord. In general, these chemicals, called neurotransmitters, transmit nerve impulses from one cell to another. There are many different neurotransmitters in the human body; some play a role in human disease and, in the case of pain, act in various combinations to produce painful sensations in the body.

How is Pain Treated?

The goal of pain management is to improve function, enabling individuals to work, attend school, or participate in other day-to-day activities. Patients and their physicians have a number of options for the treatment of pain; some are more effective than others. Whatever the treatment regime, it is important to remember that pain is treatable. The following treatments are among the most common.

Chronic Aches and Pain Can Be Responses To Excessive Stress

While a certain amount of stress in your life is unavoidable, you shouldn't get so used to it that you overlook or deny when it’s reached unhealthy proportions. Chronic stress can eventually wear down the body's natural defenses--which then manifests in an array of physical "warning sign" symptoms.

First Chronic Pain Study to Show Clear Molecular Targets in the Brain

For centuries, doctors have tried to find effective ways to treat chronic pain, a devastating neurological disorder that affects almost 90 million Americans. A new study shows that two proteins in the brain trigger the neuronal changes that amplify and sustain this type of pain. The finding may lead to new ways of treating chronic pain.

Osteoporosis: Coping With Chronic Pain

Pain is the body's way of responding to an injury. When a bone breaks, nerves send pain messages through the spinal cord to the brain, where they are interpreted. Your response to pain is determined by many factors, including your emotional outlook.

Gender and Pain

Pain affects men and women differently. While the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone certainly play a role in this phenomenon, psychology and culture, too, may account at least in part for differences in how men and women receive pain signals.

Helping Someone Who's Seriously Ill

By Jim Weinstein, MBA, MFT

Illness carries with it a whole gamut of feelings: fear, anger, disappointment, hopelessness, grief, perhaps guilt or even shame. What someone who's seriously ill usually needs most is simply someone to listen sympathetically, be a loving witness to all of their feelings and emotions, and, in the process, help share the burden of their suffering.

What Happens in Psychotherapy and What Do You Get From It?

By James R. Iberg, Ph.D.

The work of therapy is to create a situation in which it is possible to feel more of your problematic and conflicted feelings and thoughts, and to feel and think them through more deeply. A good therapist is adept at finding passages that could remain hidden to you searching alone.

The Dark Side of Prescription Drugs

By Patti Geier, LCSW

Prescription drug addiction usually begins by genuinely needing the drug that's been prescribed for medical reasons...but somewhere along the line it progressively turns to the regular use/abuse of the medication in an attempt to satisfy emotional and psychological needs.

Considering Alternative and Complementary Therapies

By Toni Gilbert, RN, MA, HNC

Currently, traditional medicine offers the best the nation has to offer in the areas of surgery and pharmaceuticals, but it often overlooks the psychological and spiritual aspects of a person dealing with a life-altering disease or injury.

Ecstasy, Pain, Anxiety, and Shame--The Psychological Complexities of the HIV+ Man

By Jim Weinstein, MBA, MFT

An essential part of understanding HIV’s emotional impact is to recognize that it is as complex as the disease itself. Accordingly, I’ve decided to list a baker’s dozen of the major issues I’ve encountered in talking with hundreds of HIV positive men over the past decade. These are the variables that determine the unique, personal shape of the disease’s shadow on lives. I believe that only through the process of understanding and honoring individual circumstances can that shadow be lifted, and healing occur.