A surprising number of people — more than 60 percent — still suffer significant pain a year after a traumatic injury in a car crash or other cause, showing the need for better pain treatment, researchers said.  In a study published on March 24, 2008 in the journal Archives of Surgery, researchers tracked 3,047 patients ages 18 to 84 from 14 US states who survived an acute traumatic injury. Dr. Frederick Rivara of the University of Washington in Seattle led the study.

Dr. Rivara also noted that people who experience chronic pain are at higher risk for depression and for being unable to work or function normally. I’ve seen this same problem in the majority of the chronic pain patients I’ve worked with the past 25 years. One reason for the prolonged problem is our medical system is very good at dealing with treating the original injury but it is not so effective when the pain continues long after the problem is supposedly fixed.  In many instances the person in pain gets blamed or accused of malingering or that the pain is all in their head.

Depression is one of the most common coexisting disorders for people living with chronic pain and it sabotages both quality of life and effective pain management. One of the biggest problems in treating depression in people with chronic pain is missing the diagnosis.  This occurs for two reasons: (1) the person in chronic pain often does not realize he or she is also suffering from a major depression; and (2) the healthcare provider is not looking for it. To learn more about this go to my article The Role of Clinical Depression in Pain Management.

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