The essence of the experience of chronic pain

Abstract

Ojala, Tapio The essence of the experience of chronic pain A phenomenological study Jyvaskyla: University of Jyvaskyla, 2015, 99 p. (Studies in Sport, Physical Education, and Health ISSN 0356-1070; 217) ISBN 978-951-39-6059-9 (nid.) ISBN 978-951-39-6060-5 (PDF) Finnish summary Diss. Chronic pain is a complex combination of biopsychosocial symptoms affecting each other. In chronic pain, the patient’s entire body may become a source of pain, and eventually the pain occupies the patient’s mind and entire life. The purpose of this thesis was to search for a more profound understanding of the phenomenon of chronic pain from the perspective of persons with chronic pain and who have been treated for their chronic pain. Thirty-four participants with different types chronic pain were interviewed. The transcribed interviews were analysed using Giorgi’s phenomenological method consisting of four phases: (1) reading the transcriptions several times, (2) discriminating meaning units, (3) collecting meaning units into groups, into meaning structures, (4) the synthesis, describing the phenomenon of chronic pain. The results indicate that chronic pain impaired the participants’ life by controlling thoughts and making life itself painful. The strongest arguments made by the participants due to chronic pain were distress, loneliness, lost identity, and low quality of life. The participants stated that the key to managing their pain was to reconsider their meanings of pain. In the analysis, four essential themes of chronic pain emerged, namely: “Chronic pain affects the whole person”, “Invisibility of chronic pain”, “Negative meaning of chronic pain”, and “Dominance of chronic pain”. Chronic pain is a multidimensional illness which requires a multidisciplinary approach to understand the phenomenon of it. Accordingly, a multidisciplinary rehabilitation programme is required to manage it; unfortunately the opposite is true in clinical practice, adopting only a rhetoric approach. A potential source of psychosocial symptoms may be the personal responses to the experience of chronic pain based on individual meaning. Thus, the focus should be to identify and revise the meanings of pain in order to manage chronic pain and to restore positivity in personal life. The phenomenological framework provides a relevant new insight into the present understanding of chronic pain.