Chronic pain and mental health: integrated solutions for global problems

Abstract

Chronic pain is the leading cause of years lived with disability globally. Populations in low- and middle-income countries bear a disproportionate burden of chronic pain because of greater exposure to road injuries, interpersonal and political violence, unregulated manual labor and limited access to healthcare. Lessons from the field of global mental health can provide a foundation to begin tackling the global burden of pain. These lessons include the use of task-sharing of front-line psychosocial care to non-specialized health workers; a transdiagnostic approach; use of syndemic models incorporating social determinants and co-morbidities; incorporating cultural idioms of distress, the symbolic meaning of pain, and traditional healing practices; and a person-centered approach emphasizing the embedded nature of an individual in her/his family, context and culture. The implications of this evidence for chronic pain management are manifold, for example: using transdiagnostic psychosocial interventions delivered by non-specialist, non-physician health workers as the first step; personalized medicine approaches based on good practice principles of chronic disease management; and concurrently addressing the social determinants often associated with pain syndromes. Taken together, these principles should be used to design intervention platforms that can address the burden of chronic pain, while reducing risks of over-utilization of opioid medications, globally.