Like waves wear away stone, pain erodes your quality of life
Of all psychiatric conditions, chronic pain is the most awfully constant, persistent and pervasive.
Depression follows chronic pain like night follows day
Chronic pain is the result of psychological factors that singly or in concert, magnify and amplify a patient’s suffering. It is a debilitating long-term condition that demands appropriate management.
Anxiety, depression, grief, stress, crisis, exhaustion. In a terrible self-perpetuating cycle, all of these will magnify and amplify the intensity of the chronic pain patient’s suffering. Anyone who has experienced relentless pain knows how brutally it can grind you down. Whereas for most of us sooner or later the pain abates, for the chronic pain sufferer, pain is a cruel, ever-present companion.
The metaphor we use to address chronic pain is, “the rocks, the sea and the magnificent tree”. Imagine a tree reaching for the sky at the top of a rugged cliff perpetually gnawed at by the pounding surf of an angry sea. The key message of the metaphor is don’t magnify the pain by looking down. You are the heroic tree that endures by reaching for the sky. The higher you rise the less you hurt.
Libraries that help with Pain
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In the midst of our busy lives we all too often neglect the importance of checking in on those around us in order to ask a simple question with important and far-reaching consequences: “Are you okay?”
Mental health conditions cost Australian workplaces $10.9 Billion a year.
A BeyondBlue/PwC Report has shown that untreated mental health conditions cost Australian workplaces $4.7 billion in absenteeism, $6.1 billion in presenteeism, and $146 million in compensation claims. What’s more, recent research assessments, utilising a human capital approach, estimate the global economic burden of mental illness is skyrocketing from US$2.5 trillion in 2010 to US$6.1 trillion in 2030.
The winter of depression
I am often asked: “How can I help someone suffering from mental illness?” The answer is surprisingly simple. The key lies in the empathy that can only come from a clear understanding of what they’re going through.
In crisis
Anxious
Depressed
Addicted
In pain
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