Writing to Cope: A Chronic Pain Study

I recently had the opportunity to interview a very interesting woman for HealthCentral. She did a study of using writing as a coping tool for dealing with chronic pain.

 "Chronic pain affects not just how you feel physically, but your emotional health, as well. Effective pain management addresses the physical symptoms, but must also help those who live with chronic pain cope emotionally on a day-to-day basis. One technique that been demonstrated to be helpful is positive writing intervention.

You may remember a call for participants for a study about chronic pain that we posted last summer. The researcher, Kathryn Lynn Ziemer has now finished the study, which was used for her dissertation for a Ph.D. in counseling psychology. A few weeks ago, I interviewed Kahryn about the background for thestudy, the results and what happens next."

You can read the rest of the interview here.
  

Comments

AlisonH said…
That leaves a lot to think about. Thank you; I wonder if it matters if writing comes easy to those who participated in her study, but either way, it's intriguing that treating oneself compassionately lessens the perceived level of pain. Well, yeah, but--I know someone who could benefit from reading that; let's see what we can do here.
8:04 PM
AlisonH said…
p.s. Hope you guys are okay in the floods.
8:05 PM
Stephen in Orlando said…
This sounds like a very interesting <a href="http://www.availclinical.com/trial/chronic-pain/>chronic pain clinical study</a>. When it comes to this medical condition, I still feel like there is a lot of surrounding mystery. This research certainly took a different approach than what I have read about in the past.
9:35 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Farber’s Disease: Could Your Child’s Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis Be Misdiagnosed?

Image
Joint inflammation or contractures. Nodules (small lumps under the skin or in other tissues). A weakened or hoarse voice. Children with these symptoms may have been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) or other types of juvenile arthritis . But do they actually have JIA or do they have Farber’s disease? An equine digression When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras. This is an adage in the medical world that encourages doctors to not wander off exploring rare and esoteric reasons for a patient’s symptoms. Because most of the time, that hoof beat of a rash likely isn’t the plague, the joint pain more likely a type of arthritis than the bends (especially if the person has never scuba dived) and you get the picture. But once in a while, it actually is a zebra. And even if it’s first identified as a horse, eventually, the stripes come through. It took five years of my parents running around to different doctors before one finally recognized that I had...
Read more

13 Things to Know for Rheumatoid Arthritis Newbies + Facebook Live

Image
Getting a diagnosis of any type of chronic illness can throw you for loop. There is so much to know and you have so little energy. My new slideshow for HealthCentral collects 13 things you need to know as an RA newbie : "Receiving a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a moment of strange duality. On one hand, you may be relieved to finally have answers for the symptoms you’ve been experiencing. On the other, it can be incredibly overwhelming to find out you have a chronic illness. Wrapping your head around all the new factors RA brings into your life is a long-term process. Here are some of the things you need to know." See the slideshow on HealthCentral . And in case you missed it, here is the Facebook Live I did yesterday talking about this topic:   
Read more