Question

Describe how pain is a subjective physical and psychosocial experience? How does the endocrine system affected when pain is present? I would like to know the answers explanation. Thank you.

Answer 1

Physical and psychosocial experience:-
The discomfort signals actual or potential injury to the body. However, pain is more than a sensation, or the physical awareness of pain; it also includes perception, the subjective interpretation of the discomfort. Perception gives information on the pain's location, intensity, and something about its nature.

The interpretation of pain is subjective and it is influenced by several specific thought processes.

1. Awareness.

Pain is the body’s way of alerting us to danger. If we encounter something sharp, we feel pain and move away from it before we experience a more serious injury. If we are paying attention and expecting pain, the feeling of pain may increase.

2. Interpretation

How a patient thinks about pain may also increase their pain. If they expect the worst, their threshold for pain will often lower. Also, if they expected their illness or injury to be healed in a certain timeframe, the disappointment when it continues can also increase the experience of pain.

3. Emotional Response to Pain

Fear, anxiety, depression, and other psychological factors may lower a patient’s pain threshold. We have to treat these emotional symptoms to reduce how the psychosocial factors affect pain.

3. Coping Skills

How a patient approaches treatment to pain can affect pain threshold levels. If a patient is prescribed strong pain relievers for relatively mild pain, they lose the opportunity to develop other coping mechanisms.

Initially severe pain causes a hyperarousal of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal system which results in elevated serum hormone levels such as adrenocorticotropin, cortisol, and pregnenolone.