Chronic pain: why we need a paradigm shift
According to the NHS, 43% of the UK population suffers from a form of chronic pain – defined in medicine as pain lasting more than three months (Fayaz et al., 2016). Fibromyalgia Syndrome (FMS) is a pain syndrome characterised by chronic widespread musculoskeletal pain, accompanied by sleep disturbances, extreme chronic fatigue and depressed mood. Like most chronic pain conditions, the origins of FMS are unknown, no cure currently exists, and pain-relief treatments are not successful.
How does fibromyalgia highlight the limitations of the biomedical approach in understanding and treating Chronic Pain Syndromes?
“Chronic pain is too complex for a one-track approach” (Morris, 1991, p.26). Chronic pain affects all dimensions of patients’ lives and changes their perception of the world and of themselves.
I believe that an interdisciplinary approach between the medical anthropology literature, neurobiology and pharmacology is needed to tackle the complexity of human chronic pain. Through the example of fibromyalgia, this literature review addresses the challenges in understanding the human experience of chronic pain, the limitations of clinical approaches, and the alternative options which chronic pain patients turn to.
I reach the conclusion that Chronic Pain Syndromes such as fibromyalgia fall outside the Cartesian dualist understanding of biomedicine – chronic pains cannot be separated as either a disorder of the mind or a disorder of the body, especially in the case of fibromyalgia, which presents evidence of the interaction between the body and the mind. Thus, the biomedical system is maladapted to treat chronic pain syndromes. The implications of this work are a need for a re-humanisation of biomedicine in order to provide better care for chronic pain patients.