Synonyms
Definition
Chronic back pain is a permanent and increasing problem of our society. One can even speak of a “widespread disease” in the meantime, since chronic back pain leads to very frequent visits to the doctor, absenteeism at the workplace and ultimately also immense costs. The reasons for chronic back pain can be manifold.
Often organic causes can be found, which are usually responsible for acute and often also for chronic back pain. But what about the many patients in whom no findings can be found that could explain the intensity and duration of the perceived pain? Medicine today assumes that the psyche plays a decisive role in the majority of pain patients. This does not mean, however, that pain patients per se are mentally ill, imagine pain or are malingeringers. Today’s understanding of pain should unite body and psyche.
Introduction
Classification of the causes of chronic back pain according to WHO: The physical causes of chronic back pain can be extremely diverse. Damage to the spine, its joints and ligaments and inflammatory processes are just as conceivable as tumor diseases or damage to other organs that “radiate” into the back. Nowadays, a large number of these causes can be identified or excluded using diagnostic methods.
What one cannot do, however, is to draw a direct conclusion about the perception of pain from the findings. The central point here is the question: “What does the pain cause to the patient and how does the patient deal with it? Everyone knows pain and everyone knows that pain can influence our behavior.
Since pain patients have to deal with this mechanism of cause and effect on a permanent basis, their behavior and, in turn, their entire lifestyle can change. Pain patients may run the risk of getting caught in a “vicious circle” that arises from this very mechanism. Example: Pain in the back leads to rest.
Rest can lead to an “anxious” behavior, since rest and caution promise freedom from pain. Anxiety, in turn, often leads to backsliding. Back pain leads to loneliness and sadness and in the end possibly to depression.
Depression in turn increases pain. This mechanism does not work for everyone, of course. It has been found that certain personality traits are decisive for the development of such a vicious circle.
The so-called “social environment” that surrounds us is made up of people, but also of the institutions we deal with every day and which shape our lives. Now the social environment in this country has its peculiarities in dealing with certain groups, such as the sick. Dealing with the sick is by no means always the same.
A person who suffers a broken leg while skiing is treated differently than someone who suffers from schizophrenia, for example. This way of dealing with a patient also has a clear influence on the course of the illness. (For example, a depressed patient will suffer much more if he is excluded because of his illness).
In the same way, there are also factors in relation to patients with chronic back pain which one must believe to have a pain-increasing and thus “chronifying” effect. For example, insults to the patient by his or her environment, such as accusing him or her of being a malingerer, lead to a worsening of the symptoms.
- Physical causes – “Impairment
- Subjective impairment – “Disability
- Social level – “Handicap
- Physical causes – “Impairment” The physical causes for the development of chronic back pain can be extremely diverse.
Damage to the spine, its joints and ligaments and inflammatory processes are just as conceivable as tumor diseases or damage to other organs that “radiate” into the back. Nowadays, a large number of these causes can be identified or excluded using diagnostic methods. What one cannot do, however, is to draw a direct conclusion about the perception of pain from the findings.
- Subjective impairment – “Disability” The central point here is the question: “What does the pain cause to the patient and how does the patient deal with it?Everyone knows pain and everyone knows that pain can influence our behavior.
Since pain patients have to deal with this mechanism of cause and effect on a permanent basis, their behavior and, in turn, their entire lifestyle can change. Pain patients may run the risk of getting caught in a “vicious circle” that arises from this very mechanism. Example: Pain in the back leads to rest.
Rest can lead to an “anxious” behavior, since rest and caution promise freedom from pain. Anxiety, in turn, often leads to backsliding. Back pain leads to loneliness and sadness and in the end possibly to depression.
Depression in turn increases pain. This mechanism does not work for everyone, of course. It has been found that certain personality traits are decisive for the development of such a vicious circle.
- The social level – “handicap” The so-called “social environment” that surrounds us is made up of the people, but also the institutions we deal with every day and which shape our lives.
Now the social environment in this country has its peculiarities in dealing with certain groups, such as the sick. Dealing with the sick is by no means always the same. A person who suffers a broken leg while skiing is treated differently than someone who suffers from schizophrenia, for example.
This way of dealing with a patient also has a clear influence on the course of the illness. (For example, a depressed patient will suffer much more if he is excluded because of his illness). In the same way, there are also factors in relation to patients with chronic back pain which one must believe to have a pain-increasing and thus “chronifying” effect. For example, insults to the patient by his or her environment, such as accusing him or her of being a malingerer, lead to a worsening of the symptoms.
