ABSTRACT
Pain is a major physical and mental health care problem in the United States. Chronic pain is defined as prolonged and persistent pain lasting at least three months (Gatchel, Peng, Peters, Fuchs, & Turk, 2007). Recurrent pain affects 10 to 20% of adults in the general population (Blyth et al., 2001; Gurje, Von Korff, Simon, & Gater, 1998) and costs more than $70 billion annually in health care costs and lost productivity (Gatchel 2004a, 2004b). Advances in the area of pain management are needed to help providers address the problem of pain, and several emerging technologies may be of considerable use to practitioners. This chapter is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to the use of technology in providing behavioral pain management services, but rather is a broad overview of some of the predominant technology-supported interventions for chronic pain. We first provide a brief overview of psychological and behavioral aspects of chronic pain management. Next, we will review some of the many Internet technology resources for clinicians and patients. We also provide a brief review of applied physiology techniques, systems and computer programs available to clinicians, as well as some technology-based techniques for behavioral tracking in chronic pain populations. We will touch on the use of computers to evaluate and triage patients with chronic pain to the appropriate level of care and provide a brief review of multimedia resources for supporting relaxation training interventions. We will provide a brief overview of virtual reality technologies for pain management as well as some preliminary work in the area of computer-assisted hypnotic intervention and assessment. Lastly, we touch on possible future directions for technology-based (more specifically brain stimulation technology) interventions for chronic pain management in behavioral health care.
