Chronic Pain: Information for Social Security Disability

Chronic pain may be defined as persistent and continuous pain, for which there may be a definable cause, such as an injury or illness, or no apparent cause.

Chronic pain can be differentiated from acute pain in one precise way: acute pain is episodic or event-related. Chronic pain, by sharp contrast, is continual and sometimes constant. In fact, many chronic pain sufferers experience their pain for weeks, months, and even years.

Chronic pain, which may be related to a legion of conditions and disorders (degenerative disc disease, cancer, joint pain, fibromyalgia, migraines, lower back pain, etc), is not particularly well understood by treating physicians and the medical community in general.

Because the etiology and development of these disorders is poorly understood, the treatment methodology concerning them is also poor when compared to the regimens that exist for more fully understood conditions.

Various medical sources, in fact, including the prestigious New England journal of medicine, have gone on record to state that patients suffering from a variety of illnesses have been routinely and systematically under-treated with regard to pain.