Literature Review - The perception of pain Essay

Literature Review - The perception of pain - Essay Example Pain causes suffering and renders an individual incapable of carrying out his or her daily activities. Pain may have several negative feelings attached with it, but the function of pain is to protect the individual from further or exacerbating an injury. For instance, when an individual’s hand touches a hot pan, the reflexive withdrawal is the best example to demonstrate this aspect of pain and how it protects the individual from skin burn. Similarly, the excruciating muscle pain during over-exertion clearly indicates that an individual needs to rest and shows that pain can have its benefits, despite the suffering and misery it puts one through. Pain also teaches people to avoid certain behaviors that can trigger the pain and acts as a reinforcer of safety behavior. (Gambert, 2010) Pain is classified into two forms that is acute and chronic pain by Turk, Meichenbaum and Genest. Acute pain is the onset of pain and last for only a few days and it occurs due to tissue damage and has a protective purpose. In other words the source of the acute pain can easily be seen. Certain examples of acute pain include heart attack pain, acute appendicitis, sprain, fractures or lacerations. Chronic pain is a type of pain that lasts for a period of six months or more than that. It is a slow, throbbing pain and usually and may persist for a very long time. Chronic pain is further divided into three categories that is chronic recurrent pain, which is experienced by people suffering from migraines; it is characterized by bouts of no pain in the middle. (Hartvigsen et.al, 2004) The second category is called chronic intractable; the pain experienced is benign but it persists throughout the individual’s life. An example of chronic intractable pain would be lower back pain. The third category is called chronic progressive, whereby the pain is experienced by the individual with increasing intensity. Cancer pain is one such example of chronic progressive whereby, the pain i ntensity increases as the condition of the patient exacerbates with time. The persistence and intensity of chronic depends on a number of factors such as social support and environmental variables that reinforce pain behavior; for instance, if the pain behavior is followed secondary benefits from the individual’s environment then the pain is likely to persist for a very long time. Also individual personality, resistance and resilience play a great role how the pain is perceived and managed by the individual. (Hartvigsen et.al, 2004) Pain may have several functions; however, researchers have often conducted detailed researches regarding how pain is transmitted from the region of injury and processed in the central control unit that is brain. The oldest theory regarding the transmission of pain is called the specificity theory developed by Renee Descartes. This model to explain pain transmission was based on the premise that there is a particular pain pathway that gets activate d every time an individual sustains an injury. This theory was very short on detail and shed no light as to where this pathway was located in the body and did not answer the fundamental question that is how can the pain pathway gets activated regardless of where the injury is sustained and how different kinds of pain are transmitted through one pathway. (Sullivan et.al, 2001) The theory had many shortcomings but remained the most dominant angle on the subject