Treating chronic pain requires a multidimensional approach that involves teaching patients how to manage it long-term in order to improve their physical strengthening, improve daily health habits that may be impacted by pain/symptoms, cope with stress related to primary pain and return to routine activities in spite of pain.
Types of chronic pain include:
- Abdominal pain (e.g., functional or recurrent).
- Conditions that may wax and wane over time (e.g., sickle cell anemia, inflammatory bowel disease and rheumatoid arthritis).
- COVID-19 and other post-viral syndromes (e.g., long-term and other related symptoms).
- Headaches (e.g., tension, chronic daily, migraines).
- Muscle and joint pain (e.g., arthritis, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and fibromyalgia).
- Complex regional pain syndrome.
Other chronic conditions with distressing symptoms
Sometimes pain is not the main concern. Children and teens experience other chronic symptoms that get in the way of life, which can include:
- Fatigue
- Dizziness
- Passing out/fainting
- Ehler Danlos Syndrome/joint hypermobility
- Non-Epileptic Events (NEEs)
- Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome
- Dysautonomia
- Physiological and medical disorders (e.g., functional neurological symptom disorder; conversion disorder)
- Needle phobia
