Substance Use Disorders and Chronic Pain Management
People 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 people are treated either in a pain clinic for their chronic pain condition or at an addiction treatment center for their substance use disorder issues.
In either case the prognosis ranges from poor to fair at best. However, I believe 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 I’ve named 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 chemical dependency treatment programs. The result is a unique integration of treatment methods that combine proper medication management with non-medication 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.
People with a chronic pain and addiction diagnosis have specific needs that are different from the typical chemically dependent person or the person who suffers only from a chronic pain condition; therefore, a specialized APM™ approach needs to be formulated and implemented. In addition to the pain and chemical dependency screening, this approach assesses for the psychological issues present before any prescription medication abuse, new psychological problems arising from the pain and subsequent addiction, as well as finding innovative treatment modalities for this particular population.
To learn more about needing a team approach please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Treatment that you can download for free on our Article 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 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 latest 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.
