Chronic Pain Patients and Substance Abuse

Abstract

The physical and mental slates of human beings are governed by lifetime experiences and biopsychosocial makeup. They reinforce each other, and sometimes lead to maladaptive states, such as chronic pain, addiction, and so on. Pain and addiction ate altered biopsychosocial experiences that are both subjective in nature and interact with one another. This interface of pain and addiction has brought about serious public health problems. It also poses ethical and healthcare dilemmas through the conflicting goals of managing pain states: pain relief, i.e. beneficence, and 'do no harm', i.e. nonmaleficence. With the rise of medicinal management for chronic pain over the last two decades, addiction has become more prevalent, significantly increasing the risk of morbidity and mortality in this patient population. It is the responsibility of healthcare providers to utilize all the multimodal tools in their armamentarium to provide effective pain relief without unintentionally facilitating substance abuse. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)