"Pain and suffering are some of the most common reasons patients seek out doctors. These patients seek answers about the causes of pain and they seek relief. Pain and suffering are not only unpleasant experiences that compromise our well-being. They threaten the sense we make of the world.Pain makes each of us ask: Why me? Why now? While pain and suffering have always been a problem for humans, they have not been the same kind of problem."
"Over the past 200 years, we have come to see pain as a medical problem, with medical causes and medical remedies. By the 20th Century, this unidirectional medical model becomes dominant: Disease causes pain, which causes suffering. Pain has been separated from suffering as its medical component and is seen as the most important cause of suffering in the hospital."
Pain and suffering drive patient consultations and threaten personal meaning, prompting existential questions. Historical perspectives framed pain as religious in medieval Europe and as social in the Enlightenment. Over the past two centuries pain has become framed as a medical problem with disease seen as causing pain and suffering. The unidirectional medical model—disease causes pain, pain causes suffering—has proven inadequate. John Bonica argued that controlling disease does not suffice to control many types of pain and founded Pain Medicine in 1973. Eric Cassell rejected mind–body dualism yet adopted a person–body dualism. Medical practice must address pain and suffering as a unified, circular problem.
Read at Psychology Today
Unable to calculate read time
Collection
[
|
...
]