SYMPATHY FOR SURVIVORS

I couldn’t wait to read your feature on chronic pain (‘Living With Chronic Pain’, March 2020). I suffered headaches all day, every day for 18 months before I sought help. I was still going to work in spite of the pain.

Naively, I thought I’d been sent to a psychiatrist to rule out any mental health problems before my admission to an inpatient pain management programme (PMP). I can honestly say this was the beginning of a nightmare. Until I entered the PMP I was a respected professional. There was no hint of psychiatric illness.

My belief is that when doctors can’t find a physical cause for pain, they think your problem is psychological. Why not simply say, ‘We don’t know what the cause is’? I finished up having psychotherapy in a psychiatric hospital and this led to a

complete breakdown. I had been severely abused as a child, but I had been the ultimate survivor: I got a uni degree, got a good job, got married and had children. I was doing very well until I got a chronic headache. Two years after my traumatic experience of psychiatry, my GP suggested trying a beta blocker, and this eradicated my headache. I also discovered for myself that wrapping my head in a wet towel and lying down in a pitch-black room achieved the same result as medication.

I have huge compassion for those suffering from a recognised medical condition that causes chronic pain, like the women in your feature. However, my heart goes out to those who have chronic pain from an as-yet-undiagnosed condition. Of the six patients in the pain management programme I attended, one turned out to have a bone fragment lodged against her spine. Another had cancer. Yet we were all treated as though we enjoyed the attention of being in chronic pain. We were treated as malingerers who needed a kick up the backside and to be sent back to work.

I no longer suffer from chronic pain but those who do all have my utmost sympathy! Name withheld