Introduction

Chronic pain (i.e., pain that lasts beyond normal healing time or more than three to six months) is a public health concern of great significance in the United States, and indeed throughout the world. Biomedical models that conceptualize chronic pain as the direct result of tissue damage largely have been replaced by biopsychosocial models that recognize the complex ways in which biological, psychological, and social factors interact to produce and shape the subjective experience of pain. Today, collaborative care intervention models are frequently recognized as preferable to purely pharmacological or surgical treatment approaches; psychologists often play key roles in providing evidence-based interventions to target many aspects of the chronic pain experience (e.g., pain intensity, pain interference, comorbid mental health conditions, treatment adherence). This chapter establishes the need for, and scope of, this handbook. The book provides readers with a thorough and timely review of the literature on evidence-based psychosocial approaches to treating chronic pain.