Mindfulness Therapy For Kids: Better For Pain Than Pills?

news.yahoo.com:

Some children, like some adults, have chronic, unexplainable pain. They have backaches every day or their legs and feet hurt every day or their necks throb constantly - and no one is sure why. Doctors call this pain idiopathic, a medical term for "we have no clue." Idiopathic pain arises spontaneously and without a known cause.

How best to treat idiopathic pain is one of medicine's great mysteries. You can anesthetize patients with painkillers, but that's not a great long-term solution, since patients become habituated (and in some cases addicted) to pain meds. In children, the situation is even more dire, since they may face decades of swallowing drugs. (See nine kid foods to avoid.)

That's why a study just published in the journal Pain is so encouraging. According to the study, clinicians who used a particular form of behavior therapy called acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) with a group of 16 chronic-pain patients ages 10 to 18 saw remarkable results: after just 10 weeks of ACT sessions, during which patients were taught strategies for accepting chronic pain so they could pursue important goals, those kids suffered less intensely and functioned significantly better day to day than did a control group of 16 chronic-pain kids who had been treated the way kids with persistent aches are normally treated - with drugs and standard talk therapy. Both groups improved, but the children in the ACT group, who got no drugs, improved more than those who took pills.

Read the whole story: news.yahoo.com

Comments

[redplanet]

I had "idiopathic" pain for almost ten years. In my case, the pain was severe. I never took pills but some days I could not move. I meditated till the cows came home. It did nothing. Unfortunately for me, I found not one doctor who understood the cause of the pain. I saw wretched people who were clueless. Some blamed me. It was, ultimately, me, who discovered the cause. I researched constantly and finally figured it out. I was hypothyroid and it caused my muscles to become not just spasmed, but tonic. Completely stone like. Everything has a reason. Don't jump on the mindfulness bandwagon. Search for the damn cause! I bet those kids were influenced by the attention - it's called the halo effect and it wears off. There is a reason they are in pain. The medical world needs people who think outside the box more often. I am now free of pain. I can turn my head. It is amazing what Armour thyroid can do.

[CynicalDog]

Thank you for saying this. I've suffered with chronic pain for over a decade from Hashimoto's disease (a thyroid problem), and FMS. Pain medication gives me the ability to live a normal, happy life and I have never used my meds inappropriately or become "addicted". Despite being diagnosed and treated by a number of medical specialists, I still have family members who insist that I could overcome my pain by embracing the proper attitude about it. If I just "got more fresh air", or "stopped acting like an old lady", they claim all my problems would go away. If anything, I'm an over-achiever and I despise the limitations my illnesses put on me, and I fought against the symptoms for many, many years before finally realizing I needed medical help. I feel sorry for kids in pain whose parents or doctors will read this article and essentially tell them to "suck it up", instead of actually treating them. Just because doctors can't find a cause of pain doesn't mean it's the patient who is wrong.

[apikores]

Idiopathic in this usage doesn't really mean "we don't have a clue." It's more of a polite way of saying "neurogenic" or "we think you're making it up."

[Arithrianos]

What is being discussed here is very old news indeed, but it is nice to know that western science is beginning to catch up a little. As is said, pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional, what is being experinced is a reduction of suffering.