Pain and Mind-Body Interactions

Chronic pain, or pain that persists for at least 3 months or longer, is a disorder of the nervous system and a common experience, with an estimated 25% of youth reporting chronic pain. For the musculoskeletal provider, pain is often stereotyped as important only to guide diagnosis and used as a metric in judging recovery from injury. However, pain is a complex phenomenon. When injury is present, pain indeed often has protective value for the athlete, as it encourages rapid assessment and action. Chronic pain, though, may sometimes have no obvious trigger and can be disabling beyond what is expected. By taking a biopsychosocial approach, providers and patients alike understand pain as a physical, emotional, cognitive, behavioral, and social experience. Given that mind-body interactions are powerful modifiers of the patient’s response to injury, viewing pain through the holistic lens of the biopsychosocial model allows for providers to take a comprehensive and more effective approach to pain treatment. For the athlete with pain, recovery will often require establishing a collaborative treatment plan that is coordinated, multimodal, and rehabilitative in nature.