In his book Dreamland Sam Quinones includes a quote by Dr. John Loeser, Professor Emeritus of Neurological Surgery at the University of Washington in Seattle. Quinones spoke with him to better understand chronic pain and how chronic pain can be approached without the use of opioids. Loeser has an approach to treating chronic pain that doesn’t rely purely on drugs and is more centered around the patient, their environment, and their social supports. Loeser describes his approach as a bio-psycho-social approach and Quinones provides the following quote:
“Chronic pain is more than something going wrong inside the person’s body. It always has social and psychological factors playing a role.”
What I think is interesting with this quote is how far it is from the experience that many of us have with doctors and medicine today. Much of our medical care comes in tiny ten minute packets, where we go back and forth with a doctor for a few minutes before they write us a prescription for something and send us on our way. The providers often don’t end up doing much to help us through our current issue, and we rely on a pill to suddenly make our lives better. The approach completely misses many other factors of health.
Where we live matters. Who we have in our lives matters. What our diet is like, what stress factors exist around us, how easily we can get outside or to a gym for physical activity matters. A ten minute conversation and a pill cannot address these issues and certainly cannot change them.
I’m not introducing this all to suggest that chronic pain isn’t real, or that it is all in a person’s head. I’m also not introducing it to suggest that people suffering from chronic pain simply are not trying hard enough, need to take more personal responsibility, or just need to move to fix their pain. Often these social determinants of health are beyond the control of any one person. Before criticizing another person, and if we want to help them, we must also consider their environment, and whether we ourselves are a factor that helps or hinders the health of another. Our world is too connected to say that someone’s health is purely a matter of their own choices and behaviors, even if personal responsibility does have a role to play in managing health. Approaching health from this angle helps us understand that an opioid is never going to be sufficient in truly alleviating chronic pain. There have to be more efforts to understand the bio-psycho-social realities of the person’s life and the chronic pain they experience.
Novel Learning 