4 - Pain
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 February 2010
Summary
Introduction
Pain has many forms. It can be a warning of bodily injury that is important for avoiding injuries and therefore important for survival. Pain that is not caused by acute injuries can be a nuisance to a person or it can alter a person's entire life and affect his or her relatives in a major way.
Pain is purely subjective and it is often interpreted in an emotional context. There are great individual differences in the way pain is perceived. The reaction to pain often varies from time to time within the same individual. Pain that persists for a long time reduces the quality of life, a factor that unfortunately has not attracted the attention of the medical community that it deserves. Pain can be the cause of suicide, thus an extreme indication of its effect on the quality of life. Quality of life considerations are important in medical treatment (or lack of treatment), and likewise play an important role in pain management.
The intensity of pain is difficult to measure, and it is difficult to objectively assess the degree of pain that a certain individual may experience. An individual's perception of pain depends on a combination of factors such as the individual's emotional state, the circumstances under which the pain was acquired, and whether it is perceived as a threatening signal. The perception of pain is affected by factors such as arousal, attention, distraction and/or expectation.
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- Neural Plasticity and Disorders of the Nervous System , pp. 149 - 240Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006