Paper short abstract:

This paper draws together social research on experiences of chronic pain; interactions between physical & psychological pain; & pain management from the perspectives of sufferers, treatment providers & the broader public. What do these different parties value in the pain management process?

Paper long abstract:

A 2019 report by PainAustralia has estimated that there are 3.24 million Australians living with chronic pain (close to 15%, though other reports suggest these numbers are closer to 20%), with an accompanying annual financial cost of $73.2 billion. There is ample mainstream research demonstrating that chronic pain is a social phenomenon and should be approached using the biopsychosocial model of medicine (Moseley and Butler, 2015). Yet the biomedical approach is much more commonly used by medical professionals in discussions with patients, even when pain is not able to be biomedically explained (Kirby, Broom, Sibbritt, Refshauge and Adams, 2015). This is arguably also the case in news media discourses, which is important because, as Seale (2003, p. 514) points out, "[w]hen people get sick, or make decisions about health, or visit their health service providers, or decide what to think and vote about health care policy and finance, their behaviour may be formulated in large part from resources drawn from various mass media." In the digital era, these decisions are often augmented by information gleaned online, or from one's own body using digital tracking devices or apps (Maslen & Lupton, 2019), adding new layers of complexity to the relationship between healthcare providers and pain sufferers. This paper draws together social research on experiences of chronic pain; interactions between physical & psychological pain; & pain management from the perspectives of sufferers, treatment providers & the broader public, asking what these different parties value in the pain management process.