Developing a Safe Chronic Pain Management Plan
People living with chronic pain who develop substance use disorders due to taking medication present a difficult challenge to treatment professionals. Many health care providers see no difference in treatment outcomes when these patients are treated either in a pain clinic for their chronic pain condition or at a chemical dependency treatment center for their addiction issues. In either case the prognosis ranges from poor to fair at best. However, it is possible to increase the probability of a more successful treatment outcome by creatively combining existing chemical dependency and chronic pain treatment methods using a multidimensional, non-traditional approach.
An important part of developing an effective pain management plan is obtaining an accurate understanding of what effective pain management really means. I believe that effective pain management requires a three part approach: (1) A medication management plan—developing an effective medication management agreement; (2) A cognitive-behavioral treatment plan—addressing pain versus suffering by better managing your thinking and feelings as well as changing any self-defeating behaviors and problematic social/family reactions; and (3) A non-pharmacological (non-medication) pain management plan—developing safer ways to manage pain.
That’s why I developed the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) system. The APM system is a treatment approach that uses a biopsychosocial model to integrate the most advanced pain management methods developed at the nation’s leading pain clinics, with the most effective treatment methods for addictive disorders developed at the nation’s leading addiction treatment programs. The result is a unique integration of treatment methods that combine proper medication management with nonpharmacological techniques to insure both chronic pain management and addiction treatment. This leads to relief of pain while lowering or eliminating the risk of addiction or relapse.
To learn more about chronic pain management please check out our website at www.addiction-free.com and go to our Publications page and check out my book Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. You can also check out our Articles page to download my free article The Right to Quality Chronic Pain Management.
To check out our July Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please click here.
