Description
Book SynopsisThis book sets out to restore the concept of healing to its place within and beyond pain medicine, in chapters authored by keynote speakers to the British Pain Society's Philosophy and Ethics Special Interest Group. Exploring psychological, spiritual and creative approaches, contributors reflect on therapeutic avenues ranging from the deliberate use of the placebo response and the importance of a caring relationship between patient and practitioner, to the use of knitting as a therapeutic tool. Barriers to the flow of healing such as practitioners' careless use of language and cultural attitudes are identified and contrasted with the need to understand the first-person perspectives of people who are suffering. This book will provide hope and inspiration both to people who have become disillusioned with conventional medical approaches to the relief of their pain, and to health professionals sadly aware of the frequent inadequacy of their efforts to help them.
Trade ReviewThis valuable book addresses two key dilemmas. First, chronic pain is always
more than a signal of tissue damage, which is why standard biomedical approaches fail. Second, multidisciplinary treatments (focused on a narrow band of the cognitive-behavioural spectrum) are not multidisciplinary
enough. A holistic approach, by contrast, opens our understanding and treatments to the physical, mental, emotional, and social
lived experience of chronic pain. It holds important resources for physicians, therapists, patients, family members, and anyone seeking a better way. -- David B. Morris, author of The Culture of Pain, Illness and Culture in the Postmodern Age and Eros and Illness. He has lectured and written on pain for a variety of professional audiences and retired from the University of Virginia as University Professor
Table of ContentsIntroduction
1. Pain and Placebo; Suffering, Caring and Healing.
Paul Dieppe
2 Healing from within - the use of hypnotic techniques in chronic
pain management
Ann Williamson
3. Suffering As A Guiding Call Towards Transformative Change
David Reilly
4. "Guerir quelquefois, Soulager souvent, Consoler toujours"
Raanan Gillon
5. Pain, breathlessness and disability: a phenomenological
analysis
Havi Carel
6. "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you": the problem
of pain
Tom Shakespeare
7. Pain Signals and other bad language
Betsan Corkhill
8 Healing the pain of a wounded soul
Jeremy Swayne
9. Suffering and the world's religions: the search for meaning in
pain
Peter Wemyss-Gorman
10. Ethnic and Cultural Effects on Pain Assessment and
Management
Jonathan Koffman
12. Why the opioid epidemic?
John Loeser
13 . Therapeutic Knitting to Facilitate Change
Betsan Corkhill
14. The real experience of pain - first-hand accounts
Bryan Vernon
