PTSD Impacts Chronic Pain Management

Written By: Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II Date: January 13th, 2010. Topic: Member Blogs.

Over the past 27 years most of the chronic pain patients I have worked with had a moderate to severe history of unresolved trauma e.g., Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Even more significant is that 100 percent of my patients who were living with chronic pain and also developed a true addictive disorder had a moderate to severe trauma history. In addition to PTSD and addiction, depression is another very common coexisting psychological disorder for someone living with chronic pain.

Nowhere is this problem greater than in our military troops coming home from combat in the Middle East. This past year I have trained several people working with our returning Veterans and they shared with me the obstacles they are experiencing with some of the returning wounded warriors. Many of these men and women experienced major trauma while in combat. When they were wounded this trauma reaction seriously impacted their ongoing chronic pain management.

For many years I’ve been proposing collaboration not competition and utilizing a multidisciplinary approach when working with people living with chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction. I believe it is imperative for pain management physicians to work hand-in-hand with other healthcare disciplines in order to provide the best treatment outcomes for this population.

To learn more about the importance of using a collaborative multidisciplinary approach for chronic pain management especially if PTSD or other coexisting disorders are present please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Article page.

If you would like to see my upcoming trainings please Click Here

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you or a loved one is undergoing chronic pain management, especially if you’re in recovery or believe you may have a medication or other mental health problem and you want to learn more effective chronic pain management tools, please go to our Publications page and check out my books; especially the Addiction-Free Pain Management® Recovery Guide: Managing Pain and Medication in Recovery. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To read the latest issue of Chronic Pain Solutions Newsletter please Click here. If you want to sign up for the newsletter, please Click here and input your name and email address. You will then recieve an autoresponse email that you need to reply to in order to finalize enrollment.