Pain Disorder

Abstract

Pain disorder is a psychiatric disorder diagnosed when the pain becomes the predominant focus of the clinical presentation and causes significant distress or impairment. Besides the high economic impact, there is a reciprocal relationship with the affective state. Pain is a subjective sensation and its severity and quality of experience in an individual is dependent on a complex mix of factors. In the treatment of acute pain, the primary purpose is pain relief, while chronic pain typically requires a combination of psychotropic drugs. In this context, it is also important to recognize and treat depression. Psychological treatments aimed at providing mechanisms to allow patients to "control and live with the pain" rather than aspire to eliminate it completely. A growing group of researchers proposes the elimination of the chapter of Somatoform Disorders and the modification of the category "psychological factors affecting a medical condition" to "psychological factors affecting an identified or feared medical condition" with clinical entities as ubchapters, largely based upon Diagnostics for Psychosomatic Research criteria.