Word: pains
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...best to treat idiopathic pain is one of medicine's great mysteries. You can anesthetize patients with painkillers, but that's not a great long-term solution, since patients become habituated (and in some cases addicted) to pain meds. In children, the situation is even more dire, since they may face decades of swallowing drugs. (See nine kid foods to avoid...
That's why a study just published in the journal Pain is so encouraging. According to the study, clinicians who used a particular form of behavior therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with a group of 16 chronic-pain patients ages 10 to 18 saw remarkable results: after just 10 weeks of ACT sessions, during which patients were taught strategies for accepting chronic pain so they could pursue important goals, those kids suffered less intensely and functioned significantly better day to day than did a control group of 16 chronic-pain kids who had been treated the way kids...
Rather, ACT promotes the acceptance of negative thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations (like chronic pain) that a patient may have struggled with for a long time. The goal is to observe and be mindful of your crummy thoughts and feelings without getting mired in them - and to be able to act in accordance with your values (like, say, going to work every day or not drinking too much) despite them. In short, ACT therapists encourage engagement with life even when it hurts. (Learn about how ACT works and the fascinating psychologist who created...
...proved effective for a variety of conditions - from depression to drug abuse to schizophrenia - but this is the first time it has been used to treat kids with pain. Here's how the study worked...
...research team - four Swedish investigators at the Karolinska Institute and Uppsala University - recruited kids who had truly suffered. The children had headaches, backaches and neck problems; many had widespread musculoskeletal pain; a couple had internal, visceral pain. They had high depression scores; 11 of the 32 had been to the emergency room with pain symptoms; 20 had had MRIs to try to find the source of their pain (without success); 21 had had physiotherapy. In short, the kids' parents had tried everything, and nothing had worked...