I’m on my way today to present at the California Association of Marriage and Family Therapist (CAMFT) at their annual Mental Health Thought Leaders Conference that opens tomorrow.  My topic is the role of the psychotherapist in providing effective chronic pain management.

The role of a psychotherapist is crucial in treating the synergistic problems facing couples and families being severely impacted by chronic pain, addiction, or other psychological disorders.  When these conditions coexist; there is a major challenge that must be addressed utilizing a multidisciplinary treatment approach and the inclusion of a psychotherapist is vital.  When these coexisting conditions occur the family problems increase synergistically but how to treat them becomes very challenging and confusing for healthcare providers including therapists as well also for patients and their families. 

I believe that effective treatment includes a strategic three-part approach for improving treatment outcomes and giving these patients and their families new hope. The reason for this multi-pronged approach is due to what I call the Addiction Pain Syndrome.™  When someone living with chronic pain also experiences coexisting psychological problems including addiction a synergistic set of symptoms occur.  This phenomenon requires a synergistic treatment system that addresses it effectively.  The three core components of the Addiction-Free Pain Management® (APM) System accomplishes this treatment goal. 

To learn more about multidisciplinary treatment for chronic pain and coexisting disorders including addiction please check out my article The Need for Multidisciplinary Chronic Pain Management that you can download for free on our Ariticles page.

You can learn more about the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System at our website www.addiction-free.com. If you are working with people in chronic pain and want to learn how to develop a plan for managing their pain and coexisting psychological disorders including depression or addiction effectively please go to our Publications page and check out my book the Managing Pain and Coexisting Disorders: Using the Addiction-Free Pain Management® System. To purchase this book please Click Here.

To listen to a recent radio interview I did conducted by Mary Woods for her program One Hour at a Time please Click Here to go to this interview.

To read the November 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.