One in five adults in Europe is always in pain. Sixty percent of those people have sleeping problems and half of them say the pain negatively affects their family life. Anxiety and depression are common. A third even say that they sometimes have such severe pain that they want to die.
These figures were recently released following a one-year survey of chronic pain patients in 13 European countries.
Anesthesiologist and pain specialist Frank J.P.M. Huygen of the Erasmus Medical Center in Rotterdam calls the research results staggering:“This research makes it clear that there is insufficient awareness of the impact of chronic pain on someone's life. Moderate to severe chronic pain does not go away and sometimes treatment does not work. The pain patient is the victim of this in all respects. He seems forgotten, he hardly counts in society.”
Of all the people who took part in the study, only two percent had seen a pain specialist on a regular basis by the end of the year. Often those affected accept their pain as something that cannot be done about, while many patients may also not the right medication to manage their pain.
Examples of chronic pain are back pain and arthritis † People who are in constant pain are advised to request a pain diagnosis from a doctor or at a pain clinic.
