Meanings of cancer-related pain – Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, April 2021, Topical Session

Presented and recorded at the Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, April 2021 virtual event

Topical Session
3C: Meanings of Cancer-Related Pain
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
11:15 AM – 12:30 PM

Session Description: Cognitive factors are important determinants of cancer-related pain experience. Simon van Rysewyk describes how cancer-related is particularly sensitive to cognitive factors and describes some common cognitions that people with cancer-related pain have and how they influence patient outcomes. Xiangfeng Xu (Renee) presents on the cultural and social factors that influence cancer pain management of Chinese migrants and what culturally congruent strategies may be implemented to improve their pain outcomes. Melanie Lovell compares levels of suffering in people with cancer-related pain versus non-cancer chronic pain, highlighting differential meanings of existential or spiritual distress and mood dysfunction. Lovell outlines management approaches to cancer pain and suffering that are not responsive to analgesia, such as meaning- or peace-centred therapies.

Session Objectives:
At the end of the session, attendees will know:
– Common meanings of cancer-related pain and what meanings influence specific patient outcomes
– Common meanings of suffering in cancer-related pain and the relationship between these meanings and non-cancer chronic pain experience and mood dysfunction
– Effective approaches to diagnosis and management of cancer-related pain symptoms, including interventions based on meaning
– Impact of culture on Chinese migrants’ perspectives and responses to cancer pain and recommendations for clinical practice

Presenter Duties
Chair: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Organiser/Presenter 1: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Presenter 2: Dr Renee Xu, University of Sydney
Presenter 3: Associate Professor Melanie Lovell, University of Sydney

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Meanings of cancer-related pain – Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, April 2021

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Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, April 2021
virtual event

Topical Session
3C: Meanings of Cancer-Related Pain
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
11:15 AM – 12:30 PM

Session Description: Cognitive factors are important determinants of cancer-related pain experience. Simon van Rysewyk describes how cancer-related is particularly sensitive to cognitive factors and describes some common cognitions that people with cancer-related pain have and how they influence patient outcomes. Xiangfeng Xu (Renee) presents on the cultural and social factors that influence cancer pain management of Chinese migrants and what culturally congruent strategies may be implemented to improve their pain outcomes. Melanie Lovell compares levels of suffering in people with cancer-related pain versus non-cancer chronic pain, highlighting differential meanings of existential or spiritual distress and mood dysfunction. Lovell outlines management approaches to cancer pain and suffering that are not responsive to analgesia, such as meaning- or peace-centred therapies.

Session Objectives:
At the end of the session, attendees will know:
– Common meanings of cancer-related pain and what meanings influence specific patient outcomes
– Common meanings of suffering in cancer-related pain and the relationship between these meanings and non-cancer chronic pain experience and mood dysfunction
– Effective approaches to diagnosis and management of cancer-related pain symptoms, including interventions based on meaning
– Impact of culture on Chinese migrants’ perspectives and responses to cancer pain and recommendations for clinical practice

Presenter Duties
Chair: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Organiser/Presenter 1: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Presenter 2: Dr Renee Xu, University of Sydney
Presenter 3: Associate Professor Melanie Lovell, University of Sydney

‘Meanings of Cancer-Related Pain’

Sculpture by Fabio Viale

Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting, April 2021
virtual event

Topical Session
3C: Meanings of Cancer-Related Pain
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
11:15 AM – 12:30 PM

Session Description: Cognitive factors are important determinants of cancer-related pain experience. Simon van Rysewyk describes how cancer-related is particularly sensitive to cognitive factors and describes some common cognitions that people with cancer-related pain have and how they influence patient outcomes. Xiangfeng Xu (Renee) presents on the cultural and social factors that influence cancer pain management of Chinese migrants and what culturally congruent strategies may be implemented to improve their pain outcomes. Melanie Lovell compares levels of suffering in people with cancer-related pain versus non-cancer chronic pain, highlighting differential meanings of existential or spiritual distress and mood dysfunction. Lovell outlines management approaches to cancer pain and suffering that are not responsive to analgesia, such as meaning- or peace-centred therapies.

Session Objectives:
At the end of the session, attendees will know:
– Common meanings of cancer-related pain and what meanings influence specific patient outcomes
– Common meanings of suffering in cancer-related pain and the relationship between these meanings and non-cancer chronic pain experience and mood dysfunction
– Effective approaches to diagnosis and management of cancer-related pain symptoms, including interventions based on meaning
– Impact of culture on Chinese migrants’ perspectives and responses to cancer pain and recommendations for clinical practice

Presenter Duties
Chair: Professor Jane Phillips, University of Technology, Sydney
Organiser/Presenter 1: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Presenter 2: Dr Renee Xu, University of Sydney
Presenter 3: Dr Melanie Lovell, University of Sydney

Call for Abstracts: Meanings of Pain, Volume III

Sculpture by Fabio Viale

Volume III Topic: Meanings of pain in vulnerable or special patient groups

Series Editor: Dr Simon van Rysewyk
Publisher: Springer

The Meanings of Pain book series describes how the meaning of pain changes pain experience – and people – over time.

Pain in the moment is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant. If pain persists over time, more complex meanings about the long-term consequences, or burden of pain, can develop. These meanings can include existential meanings such as despair or loneliness that focus on the person with pain, rather than pain itself.

Meanings of Pain offers a vocabulary of language about pain and meaning. An objective of the series is to stimulate self-reflection on how to use information about meaning in clinical and non-clinical pain settings. The book series is intended for people with pain, family members or caregivers of people with pain, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers.

Although chronic pain can affect anyone, there are some groups of people for whom particular clinical support and understanding is urgently needed. This applies to “vulnerable” or “special” groups of people and to the question of what pain means to them.

Volume III focuses on describing the meanings of pain in groups of “vulnerable” or “special” people, such as:

• Infants or children
• Women
• Older adults
• People with a physical or intellectual disability
• People with a brain injury
• People diagnosed with a disease
• Veterans
• Athletes
• Workers
• Addicts
• People with mental illness or mental disorders
• Homeless people
• People in rural or remote communities
• People in multicultural communities
• Indigenous peoples

Invited chapter types
The editor Dr Simon van Rysewyk invites contributions for Volume III on the meanings of pain in vulnerable or special patient groups. The following manuscript types will be considered:

• Original Research (e.g., original clinical, translational, or theoretical research)
• Reviews (e.g., Systematic Reviews, Meta-analytic reviews, Cochrane type reviews, Pragmatic Reviews)

Authors interested in submitting a chapter for publication in Volume III are invited to submit a 350-word Abstract, which includes the name and contact information of the corresponding author, to:

Dr Simon van Rysewyk
simon.vanrysewyk@utas.edu.au

Abstract Deadline: closed

“It is my opinion that this … work will stand as the definitive reference work in this field. I believe it will enrich the professional and personal lives of health care providers, researchers and people who have persistent pain and their family members. The combination of framework chapters with chapters devoted to analysing the lived experience of pain conditions gives the requisite breadth and depth to the subject.” – Dr Marc A. Russo, MBBS DA(UK) FANZCA FFPMANZCA, Newcastle, Australia, from the Foreword in Volume II

“Meanings of Cancer-Related Pain”

Sculpture by Fabio Viale

Australian Pain Society Annual Scientific Meeting 2020
Hobart Tasmania

Topical Session
Tuesday, April 7, 2020, 3.30-5.00pm

Session Description: Cognitive factors are important determinants of cancer-related pain experience. Simon van Rysewyk describes some common meanings and beliefs that people have about cancer, illness, and pain, and the consequences these meanings have in relation to common help-seeking behaviours or coping strategies people choose to adopt. Suffering is a cognitive and emotional response to recurrent perceived losses experienced in some people with cancer. Megan Best presents on the challenges in assessing people with cancer-related suffering and the relationship of suffering to cancer-related pain. Melanie Lovell compares levels of suffering in people with cancer-related pain versus non-cancer chronic pain, highlighting differential meanings of existential or spiritual distress and mood dysfunction. Best and Lovell outline management approaches to cancer pain and suffering that are not responsive to analgesia, such as meaning- or peace-centred therapies.

Session Objectives
At the end of the session, attendees will know:
– Common meanings of cancer-related pain and how people apply these meanings to cope with their pain
– Common meanings of suffering in cancer-related pain and the relationship between these meanings and non-cancer chronic pain experience and mood dysfunction
– Effective approaches to diagnosis and management of cancer-related pain symptoms, including interventions based on meaning

Presenter Duties
Chair: Professor Jane Phillips, University of Technology, Sydney
Organiser/Presenter 1: Dr Simon van Rysewyk, University of Tasmania
Presenter 2: Dr Megan Best, University of Sydney
Presenter 3: Associate Professor Melanie Lovell, University of Sydney

Call for Papers: Pain Medicine Special Issue, “Meaning in the Context of Pain”

Sculpture by Fabio Viale

Dear reader,

Pain Medicine is planning an interdisciplinary Special Issue, “Meaning in the Context of Pain.” I am the lead guest editor; Dr John Quintner and Prof Milton Cohen are guest editors.

Meaning is an essential dimension of the experience of pain. Empirical evidence from qualitative and mixed method studies suggests that pain is not only associated with a common meaning of “threat” or “danger,” but also is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant. If this combined meaning persists over time, people’s concerns may shift from the experience of pain onto themselves as persons. As a result of this shift, powerful existential meanings such as hopelessness or loneliness may develop. Such experiential meanings interact with desires to reduce or eliminate pain, and with expectations about the perceived efficacy of a particular treatment for pain. These meanings may in turn result in a spectrum of negative moods, such as depression or despair, and negative beliefs such as fatalism. Such negative components of the emotional dimension are often at the core of the lived experience of pain.

Despite this evidence, the preference for and consequent overwhelming dominance of biomedical explanations in pain clinical practice and research has meant that this other dimension of the experience of pain has been overlooked.

Special Issue Themes and Sub-Themes

Themes of the “Meaning in the Context of Pain” Special Issue include, but are not restricted to, the following:

• Common experiential meanings of pain in different contexts
  • Chronic non-cancer pain or cancer-related pain
  • Pain in special or vulnerable groups
  • Pain and mental illness
  • Pain and substance abuse
  • Pain and fatigue

• How meaning modifies the experience of pain
  • Pain and personal identity over time, including stigmatisation
  • Family meanings and the experience of pain (e.g., “psychosomatic families”)
  • Perceived meaningfulness of life, including suicidality
  • How symbolic manipulation of meaning (e.g., verbal instruction) can change pain experience
  • Perceived meaning of different types of medical treatment
  • “Catastrophising” and “fear-avoidance” as expressions of meaning
  • The limits of meaning: when no meaning can be given to an experience of pain (e.g., “medically unexplained pain”)
  • Coming to terms with “pain acceptance”

• Therapeutic implications of meaning
  • Similarities and differences in meanings of pain between the person in pain versus observers
  • The influence of meaning on pain scale ratings
  • Implications of meaning-making for self-control or self-management of pain
  • How patients’ meanings of pain can inform treatment planning
  • Strategies patients use to find meaning in their pain
  • Work rehabilitation and returning to work
    
    
• Experiential research methods to study meanings of pain
  • Ethnography, narrative, phenomenology, grounded theory, and single-case study methods
  • Other research methods: Neurophenomenology, The Descriptive Experience Sampling Method, The Experiential-Phenomenological Method, The Elicitation Interview Method, quantitative designs, quantitative-qualitative designs

The meaning of “meaning” and clinical applications or implications of meaning in the context of pain must be addressed in detail in all contributions.

Keywords: pain, meaning, patient experience, pain management

Invited article types

Within the scope of the themes and sub-themes described above, the guest editors invite contributions considered in the form of the following manuscript types, in order of importance:

• Reviews (e.g., Systematic Reviews, Meta-analytic reviews, Cochrane type reviews, Pragmatic Reviews)
• Original Research (e.g., original clinical, translational, theoretical or philosophical research)

See Instructions to Authors in Pain Medicine.

If you wish to submit an article for consideration in this Special Issue, please let me know at: simon.vanrysewyk@utas.edu.au. Then, email me a 400-word description/summary/abstract by November 1, 2019.

Thank you for your time.

Does “pain” need redefining?

By Simon van Rysewyk,¹ John Quintner,² Milton Cohen^3
1School of Humanities, University of Tasmania, Australia; ²Arthritis & Osteoporosis Western Australia; ³St Vincent’s Clinic and Clinical School, University of New South Wales, Australia

Presented at the 2019 Patient Experience Symposium, April 29-30, 2019, Sydney, Australia.

Introduction: The widely accepted definition of pain promulgated by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), although useful in a clinical context, is written mainly from the perspective of the “observer”.  As such it fails sufficiently to capture the perspective of the “experiencer” of pain.
Methods: This presentation briefly analyses the historical development of the IASP definition, and some of the commentaries and suggested modifications to it over almost 40 years. Common factors of pain that patients experience are described, together with theoretical insights from philosophy and biology.
Results: Major problems with the IASP definition of pain include: (i) the stance of the observer is privileged over that of the experiencer of pain; (ii) the obligatory linking with “tissue damage” focuses attention on the body as distinct from the person; and (iii) the validity of the experience when there is no obvious “cause” is questioned. A revised definition of pain is offered: Pain is a mutually recognisable somatic experience that reflects a person’s apprehension of threat to their bodily or existential integrity.
Conclusion: This definition integrates the subjectivity or “first-person” level of experience of pain, and the challenge for the “second-person” of clinical evaluation (if not also intervention) towards objective “third-person” goals. This redefinition of pain is compatible with that of the IASP but more philosophically sound, biologically relevant, clinically applicable, and meaningful for people experiencing pain and for health care professionals who engage with them.

Download here.

Meanings of Pain, Volume II: Common Forms of Pain and Language (2019, Springer)

• Provides a study of pain in which meaning is essential to the way pain is felt
• Describes meanings of pain in patients with common forms of chronic pain
• Discusses the importance of meaning in pain assessment, diagnosis, clinical language and medical stigmatisation

Experiential evidence shows that pain is associated with common meanings. These include a meaning of threat or danger, which is experienced as immediately distressing or unpleasant; cognitive meanings, which are focused on the long-term consequences of having chronic pain; and existential meanings such as hopelessness, which are more about the person with chronic pain than the pain itself.

This interdisciplinary book – the second in the three-volume Meanings of Pain series edited by Dr Simon van Rysewyk – aims to better understand pain by describing experiences of pain and the meanings these experiences hold for the people living through them. The lived experiences of pain described here involve various types of chronic pain, including spinal pain, labour pain, rheumatic pain, diabetic peripheral neuropathic pain, fibromyalgia, complex regional pain syndrome, endometriosis-associated pain, and cancer-related pain. Two chapters provide narrative descriptions of pain, recounted and interpreted by people with pain.

Language is important to understanding the meaning of pain since it is the primary tool human beings use to manipulate meaning. As discussed in the book, linguistic meaning may hold clues to understanding some pain-related experiences, including the stigmatisation of people with pain, the dynamics of patient-clinician communication, and other issues, such as relationships between pain, public policy and the law, and attempts to develop a taxonomy of pain that is meaningful for patients. Clinical implications are described in each chapter.

This book is intended for people with pain, their family members or caregivers, clinicians, researchers, advocates, and policy makers.

“It is my opinion that this … work will stand as the definitive reference work in this field. I believe it will enrich the professional and personal lives of health care providers, researchers and people who have persistent pain and their family members. The combination of framework chapters with chapters devoted to analysing the lived experience of pain conditions gives the requisite breadth and depth to the subject.” – Dr Marc A. Russo, MBBS DA(UK) FANZCA FFPMANZCA, Newcastle, Australia, from the Foreword

Review the Table of Contents and buy now on Springer.

Meanings of Pain, Volume II, follows on from Meanings of Pain, Volume I, published in 2016 by Springer.

‘Meanings of Pain in Patients with Cancer’ – Cancer Pain Symposium 2017

Cancer Pain Symposium, 9 December, 2017

Sydney Vital

Abstract

Pain due to cancer, a common effect of the disease and its treatment, makes the experience of cancer more distressing for patients and their families. The meaning of cancer-related pain has been referred to as the “feared consequence of cancer”, and associated with pathology and death. However, if cancer-related pain is related to (non-cancer) pain and its common factors, of which the meaningfulness of pain is one, and not the cancer disease, then the meaning of cancer-related pain is clinically relevant. The meanings of personal experiences are important to human beings, and influence how we respond to life’s changing circumstances. A neglected aspect of the clinical management of cancer is the patient’s ability to make the experience of cancer meaningful, despite the presence of disabling pain. This presentation provides an overview of the meanings of pain, and some pilot data based on Lipowski’s meanings of chronic illness, which suggests that cancer-related pain is qualitatively closer to chronic non-cancer pain than to cancer. Ideas are provided for health care professionals to make cancer and cancer-related pain more meaningful to patients and their families.