Pain affects up to 80 percent of the population at some point in their life for at least a short time, and across the world, 40 percent of the population suffers from chronic pain. The financial impact of pain is in the billions of dollars a year, and is thought to be more costly than all other diseases combined. However, the amount of money spent on research to treat pain is less than 5 percent of all the dollars spent on health research. Changing the face of pain is left to a very small group of medical providers who work in this tough field.
Pain practitioners are found in many medical professions, from dentistry and acupuncture to traditional medical physicians. Research is often left to those who are treating patients daily, and there are very few dedicated to spending most of their time performing ground-level analysis of causes of pain and associated conditions.
Unfortunately, some of the best clinicians who treat pain are so busy managing the many patients who need their services that they do not have the time to transform their knowledge into meaningful studies to pass on to the rest of the world. Most of us would love to have a dedicated staff to transform our ideas into meaningful studies to develop better systems to treat complex pain problems, but no one is providing money for this work.
Pain is a complex problem that affects both psychological and physical aspects of our lives. It is a billion dollar problem and virtually no money is being spent on research. This is why Pain Awareness Month is so important, so we can help bring the problem to the forefront and bring more dollars to research and treat of this prolific problem.
