Psychosocial Aspects of Pain

Book excerpt: Psychosocial Aspects of Pain: A Handbook for Health Care Providers is intended to serve as a comprehensive resource for clinicians who wish to learn about the psychological, psychiatric, and social aspects of pain. Other books on these topics have targeted mental health specialists. This volume, however, has been prepared for a different audience-pain specialists and others in the health care professions, including physicians, nurses, and physical therapists, who would like to learn more about psychosocial issues in the evaluation and treatment of patients with painful conditions. Interest in these aspects of pain and in the particular challenges that often arise in treating pain patients is widespread in health care. This handbook fills an important need by providing, in one convenient volume, a collection of focused reviews of all the information that health care providers need to know about psychosocial aspects of pain.