Chronic pain: why we need a paradigm shift

In this undergraduate thesis, I explore the limitations of the biomedical system in diagnosing and treating chronic pain conditions - specifically fibromyalgia. Taking a multidisciplinary approach, I combine physiological and neurological understandings of chronic pain (as of 2019) with a medical anthropological approach which centres patients’ lived experience and highlights the importance of the patient-practitioner relationship. In the last chapter, I explore complementary alternative medicines that chronic pain patients most often turn to, and how they differ from standard biomedical treatments. It is in those differences that the limitations of our current health system seem the most problematic: how do we re-integrate meaning into our healthcare systems? How do we re-humanise medicine? How can we take a more holistic approach to healthcare? How do non-biological factors contribute to chronic pain?