A call to fight chronic-pain epidemic

During my years working as a health writer, I’ve interviewed a wide variety of frustrated – and often depressed – chronic pain sufferers who, after years of searching, were at a complete loss as to where to find help. The causes of the pain were many and varied – from ongoing back problems to autoimmune disorders to accident injuries – but the frustrations were similar.

You could see the pain etched into these patients’ faces, reflected in their movements. Often, they felt misunderstood or not believed or condemned for not “sucking it up” and complaining too much. Living with ongoing pain had become a way of life.

The number of these pain sufferers, who often go ontreated and suffer needlessly, has reached epidemic proportions in the the United States, and now the dean of Stanford’s School of Medicine is calling for a public health campaign to fight the problem.

Read the full article at stanford.edu