Psychological Assessment of Pain Patients


This page is incomplete. It displays memoes and/or notes.

Title Memo

This will cover either psychological or psychiatric diagnosesc to some extent.

Note Text: 1401 Rule out pathology

Patients should receive a thorough history and examination to rule out serious pathology that may be responsible for their CLBP. [What exactly is meant by "serious pathology," and what aspects of pain suffering does it consider?]

Robert J. Gatchel, Ph.D., ABPP1,** and Kathryn H. Rollings, Ph.D., Candidate, "Evidence informed management of chronic low back pain with cognitive behavioral therapy (HHS Public Access Author manuscript)", Spine J. 2008 Jan-Feb; 8(1): 40–44.: 2008 (Evidence informed management of chronic low back pain with cognitive behavioral therapy.html)

Note Text: 249 Relevant areas

...we discuss several areas that might be particularly relevant for assessment of patients with chronic pain, namely, substance abuse, fear, malingering, and cognitive factors (i.e., attention, memory, concentration).

Turk, Dennis, and Melzack, Ronald, "Handbook of Pain Assessment", The Guildford Press, 2011, 189

Note Text: 342 Unexplained somatic symptoms

A large international study confirms that whereas medically unexplained somatic symptoms are very common, full somatization disorder is quite rare....Somatization as a process, meaning the somatic experience of distress, is ubiquitous. It accounts for the majority of symptoms presented to primary care physicians....[SH....

Turk, Dennis, and Melzack, Ronald, "Handbook of Pain Assessment", The Guildford Press, 2011, 408

Note Text: 255 Reasons for psych. evaluation

Generally, a referral for [psychiatric/psychological] evaluation may be indicated when disability greatly exceeds what would be expected, based on physical findings alone; when the patient makes excessive demands on the health care system; when the patient persists in seeking medical tests and treatment that are not ind....

Turk, Dennis, and Melzack, Ronald, "Handbook of Pain Assessment", The Guildford Press, 2011, 193

Note Text: 259 Instruments used clinically

Because reliability estimates are influenced by sample size, it follows that the measurement error of questionnaire data from one person should be expected to be much greater than that found in reports based on group data. [They suggest that the questionnaire be used repeatedly with the client for higher reliability. T....

Turk, Dennis, and Melzack, Ronald, "Handbook of Pain Assessment", The Guildford Press, 2011, 194

Note Text: 277 Williams suggests

Williams (1998) suggested that psychologists should use three major areas in which discrepancies occur to construct a malingering index for traumatic brain injury. Some of these concepts are also relevant for patients with chronic pain. The first is the relationship of injury severity to cognitive functioning. The se....

Turk, Dennis, and Melzack, Ronald, "Handbook of Pain Assessment", The Guildford Press, 2011, 204

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