Managing chronic pain can be a very challenging process, but it becomes even more difficult when coexisting psychological disorders, including addiction, are also present.  I have written a book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System.  I wrote this book to assist healthcare providers to develop effective treatment plans for their patients with chronic pain and coexisting psychological disorders including addiction. 

One important part of the book is to help healthcare professionals to understand and integrate the principals of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) system into their existing treatment protocols.

The APM™ System consists of three major components: (1) A medication management plan—in consultation with an addiction medicine specialist; (2) A cognitive-behavioral treatment plan addressing pain versus suffering, treating family system issues and changing self-defeating behaviors, using eight Core Clinical Exercises from the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Workbook; and (3) A nonpharmacological pain management plan—developing safer medication-free ways to manage pain. Most pain patients need a strategic combination of all three of the above.

I believe that in addition to the many roadblocks this population experience, there are two major initial obstacles that sabotage positive treatment outcomes: (1) The Denial system. People living with this condition need to work through their denial and treatment resistance in order for treatment to be effective; and (2) Depression and the feeling of hopelessness that usually accompanies these coexisting conditions.

To learn more about this topic please go to my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the November issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.