ABSTRACT
Major papers on the biopsychosocial model of pain also exemplify lack of detailed consideration of social factors. There has been an explosion of research over the past fifty years on the physiological and neurochemical characteristics of nociceptive systems, with this approach supporting pharmacological, surgical, and other biophysical interventions. The widely endorsed definition of pain as 'an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage' supports extensive efforts to understand sensory. Explication of social factors has often been ignored in the development of theoretical models of pain. Not all biologically based models of pain omit consideration of social factors. The widely respected and influential gate control theory of pain and its successor, neuromatrix theory, explicitly accord importance to the meaning of the experience for the individual and cultural learning. Pain is often preventable. It doesn't just begin, a sequence of human interactions often is antecedent to the discomfort.
