What Works for Chronic Pain?

Reviews the book, Psychosocial interventions for chronic pain: In search of evidence by Ranjan Roy (see record 2008-02225-000). When I lecture to health professions students about chronic pain, I commonly make a distinction between pain and its correlates. Among the correlates I mention are changes in family relationships (including the spectrum of behaviors and roles between spouses and between parents and children), changes in work (possible loss of income, loss of defining personal roles), and changes in daily functioning (energy, appetite, sleep, activities of daily living). Ranjan Roy’s Psychosocial Interventions for Chronic Pain: In Search of Evidence is a book that’s largely about these correlates of pain and the psychosocial methods used to treat them. It’s also a book about optimism and discouragement—optimism that psychosocial interventions can be effective and discouragement over the current stage of knowledge. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)