NYTimes Opinion: "Is Pain a Sensation or Emotion" - H. Warraich 2019

[James Morris-Lent]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/pain-opioids.html

I saw this in the opinions today. It's a short read and I must say it is fluff.

Summary:
-The author notes that opioids have proven to be ineffective and even counterproductive for treating chronic pain (okay).
-From that point he makes the (unfounded) logical leap to conclude that our understanding of pain as predominantly a physical sensation or stimulus (which one is it?) has proven ineffectual.
-Rather, we need to understand it also as an emotion (like the Greeks did!), part of the person's 'story', because brain-stuff is happening when we process/feel pain (apparently anything brain ~=~ mind if you need it for your argument) and there is an association between pain and mental disorders.
-The author doesn't name any specific model or offer any specific treatment other than noting the necessity of 'compassion'. However, he seems to take it as a given that there are interventions available to us that will prevent acute pain from becoming chronic.

The ancient Greeks considered pain a passion — an emotion rather than a sensation like touch or smell. During the Dark Ages in Europe, pain was seen as a punishment for sins, a spiritual and emotional experience alleviated through prayers rather than prescriptions.

In the 19th century, the secularization of Western society led to the secularization of pain. It was no longer a passion to be endured but a sensation to be quashed.

The conventional thinking about pain as purely a physical stimulus has clearly failed us. Maybe the ancient Greeks knew something we don’t.

There is also an incredibly strong association between pain and mental health. Conditions like depression and anxiety greatly increase the chance of developing chronic pain, while patients who experience pain are at high risk of developing depression or anxiety. This vicious cycle is partly a result of the fact that there is considerable overlap in the areas of the brain that deal with pain and emotion.

Not every person who experiences acute pain goes on to develop chronic pain. We need to learn more about which interventions work to prevent this transformation.

future doctors should be taught that pain is part of the story of the person who suffers from it, not just a separate physical phenomenon.

If chronic pain is an emotion as well as a sensation, then it is unlikely to be managed successfully without compassion. A 2017 study of doctors in Spainfound that those whose patients rated them as empathetic were more effective at relieving their patients’ pain. Physical therapy that doesn’t just manipulate joints but also addresses the context pain comes alive in, encourages optimism and builds emotional resilience has been found to be more effective.

 

[Sisyphus]

It's the NY Times. Think 'intellectual substance of the Weekly World News, neuroticism of an Upper East Side New Yorker, both covered in a suffoctating cape of smug'. NYT's audience are the same people you saw in the college cheating headlines, plus the professors at the colleges involved. But unlike WWN, the NYT never found Bat Boy.

 

[shak8]

After reading that article this morning, I will try not reading any more articles about pain in news outlets nor routine publish-or-perish research articles. Ditto for the opioid crisis.

I don't need to be reminded that society wants to take away my low dose opioid, the only treatment that briefly gives me a bit of energy and pain-clearing to carry on a 35% of normal activity level.

Critique: Yes, when people empathize with the person in pain, they will feel a sort of empathic pain-lite. When someone dies, one feels the tragedy in that same mini-way. OK. But calling pain an emotion, now that is feeding chocolate to the psychologists.

The writer is revelling in the fact that he didn't take an opioid for his slipped disc and that he did a lot of physical therapy instead. Bully for him--wow, it's like "How I spent my summer vacation."

Not all pain is of the same intensity. Widespread pain, such as fibromyaglia is noxious and affects much of the brain and senses. It is extraordinarly disruptive of one's life. Not all pain is the same. Not all pain is the same. Not all pain....

 

[rvallee]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/16/opinion/sunday/pain-opioids.html

I saw this in the opinions today. It's a short read and I must say it is fluff.

Summary:
-The author notes that opioids have proven to be ineffective and even counterproductive for treating chronic pain (okay).
-From that point he makes the (unfounded) logical leap to conclude that our understanding of pain as predominantly a physical sensation or stimulus (which one is it?) has proven ineffectual.
-Rather, we need to understand it also as an emotion (like the Greeks did!), part of the person's 'story', because brain-stuff is happening when we process/feel pain (apparently anything brain ~=~ mind if you need it for your argument) and there is an association between pain and mental disorders.
-The author doesn't name any specific model or offer any specific treatment other than noting the necessity of 'compassion'. However, he seems to take it as a given that there are interventions available to us that will prevent acute pain from becoming chronic.

The only response to this would be to put your ideas to the test. No sane person would.

This framing that chronic pain is different from, well, pain, is a bizarre belief that is not borne out by reality.

Test it. It's easy. Doesn't even need to be intense, I'm sure there are ways to stimulate pain in a way that does not do any damage. In fact, there are plants and animals (like bullet ants) that have compounds that cause agonizing pain without any measurable damage.

This is just like braggards who claim they can get through waterboarding like it's nothing. They cry like everyone else, most can't even take more than a few seconds of it before they tap out, which actually makes all the difference, when you can just make it stop on demand.