Coping with Pain

Opioids in Cancer Pain Prescription Opioid Abuse Musculoskeletal Pain When meeting someone who suffers from persistent pain, one key question that often arises is: “How do you cope with the pain?” Attempts to understand pain coping have been a major focus of psychosocial pain research and clinical practice for the past two decades. Much of the interest in pain coping can be traced back to the emergence of more sophisticated models of pain (e.g., the gate control theory, the neuromatrix theory). These models show that pain is a complex, multidimensional experience that not only has a sensory component, but also cognitive, affective, and motivational/behavioral components. One implication of these models is that cognitive, behavioral, and emotional efforts to cope with or deal with pain could influence pain and pain-related outcomes such as psychological and physical functioning. This issue of Pain: Clinical Updates provides a brief overview of clinical research on pain coping. In the first section, we highlight descriptive studies of pain coping. In the second section, we review studies testing interventions designed to enhance pain coping. In the third and final section, we discuss several important directions for future clinical research in this area.