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Abstract

Anyone who works in the medical field knows the toll chronic pain exerts on patients firsthand. Often when you first see a pain patient, he already has a long list of providers he has seen and treatments that have failed. (In this book we are using “he” when referring to patients for brevity, while obviously patients are both genders.) He often brings to the visit not only a long and discouraging narrative but an increasingly despondent emotional state. He may feel his pain is not being taken seriously, that no one is “listening” to him and that no one understands him. He may be nurturing resentments against employers and insurance companies if his pain resulted from an accident or injury and be harboring strong feelings of self-pity.

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Vasudevan, S. (2015). The Problem of Chronic Pain. In: Multidisciplinary Management of Chronic Pain. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20322-5_2

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