Pain psychiatry
Modern pain therapy has developed from earlier models that focused solely on physical function into what are known as multimodal therapy approaches. This means that physical, psychological and social treatment approaches are used alongside and at the same time as each other, which corresponds to the biopsychosocial model.
Sleep disorders, depression and anxiety disorders are particularly frequent concomitant psychological disorders experienced by pain patients. Some of these conditions will already have existed before the pain disease and have a negative effect on the latter and some may only develop during the course of the pain disorder. Identifying and treating these issues is an important component of the successful comprehensive treatment of our patients. This is why pain physiotherapy and/or psychiatric assessment and treatment, if required, is an important component of successful therapy for chronic pain.
Our treatment offers
Psychiatric diagnosis
The diagnostic task of the Psychiatry team in the Centre for Pain Medicine is to identify possible psychological disorders and to link them with the chronic pain. Pain patients often also have concomitant psychological diseases such as depression and anxiety, while almost two thirds of them are affected by severe sleep disturbances. Over many years of treatment, some of these people develop a dependency on pain medication. Other psychological diseases are also disproportionately often associated with chronic pain.
Psychiatric therapy
The therapeutic task of the Psychiatry team in the Centre for Pain Medicine is the treatment of recognised psychological diseases according to international guidelines. In this process, psychopharmacology, i.e. treatment with antidepressants, for example, plays a significant role: on the one hand as a psychopharmaceutical agent in the actual sense of treating the concomitant psychiatric disease itself, but on the other hand often also as medication with an immediate effect on the pain event. Ideally, both lines of treatment can be combined. A further essential aspect of treatment is pain psychotherapy treatment.
