April Pain Blog Carnival

It’s that time again! For a place to catch the best of April’s pain-related blogs, head on over to How to Cope with Pain blog and take a look!
While you’re there, I’m sure you’ll find plenty else to keep you interested - so enjoy!

Mindfulness effectiveness

One of the most delightful aspects of the ‘new wave’ of cognitive behavioural therapies is the continued adherence to test the effectiveness of therapy in a scientific way. There has been quite a flow of ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy), CCBT (Contextual Cognitive Behavioural Therapy) and allied therapies in the psychological literature, and now [...]

Explaining mindfulness - doing and being

Today I worked with a person who is very analytic, and finds it quite difficult to feel emotions or experience sensations without thinking about them. He has persistent pain that he calls ‘frustrating’ or ‘unbearable’ - emotions that for me are quite poles apart!
His overall anxiety levels are quite high, and at one time [...]

Control or acceptance?

I’ve been reading a wee bit of ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy recently. I’m trying to find a relatively simple way to explain ACT to my patients, many of whom just don’t do reading, and prefer living life in a practical way, rather than an intellectual or even spiritual way. I’m not sure [...]

ANZAC Day - Remembering our fallen and returned soldiers

25 April is ANZAC day - the day we in New Zealand and Australia remember the sacrifice and contribution our military people made to keep New Zealand and the Allies safe over many different wars.
For more history, go to the RSA website, and if you’re online and want to catch up with the ANZAC Day [...]

Mind, body and pain

For lots of therapists, the connection between mind and body is so clear that we forget many people just have no concept of how the two might be connected. So often in the web there are wild statements about pain that it’s tempting to think that no-one’s prepared to get it right or to [...]

Pain, disability and psychosocial factors

Something that can really get my goat is when people think that because someone has high disability, and they have pain, it must be the pain that ’causes’ the disability - therefore reduce the pain, and you will inevitably reduce the disability.
This can lead to over-treatment of pain with medication (to reduce the pain, often [...]

Anatomy and physiology refresher - or patient information

If you have forgotten (or never really knew) all your muscle origins, insertions, innervations and actions - here is a fantastic animated site that can bring it all back in glorious colour and animations!!
Get Body Smart has interactive tutorials, animations, quizzes, and lots of fun for anyone who is interested in really know what each [...]

Photographs of activities of daily living - cervical spine

Assessing fear in patients with cervical pain: Development and validation of the Pictorial Fear of Activity Scale-Cervical (PFActS-C).
Turk DC, Robinson JP, Sherman JJ, Burwinkle T, Swanson K.
Ever since the PHODA or photographs of activities of daily living was developed, I’ve used pictures to help establish exactly what movements and contexts people are worried about. [...]

Truths from the past

Mindfulness, Contextual Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Acceptance and Commitment Therapy suggest that the problem with traditional cognitive behavioural therapy is that it attempts to control the uncontrollable. These therapies work on helping us to let go of the attempt to control against difficulties, and instead, focus on being aware of, but not judging, our negative [...]