Novel mind-body program outperforms other treatments for chronic back pain
People are incredibly reluctant to believe that ailments might actually be partly or mainly psychological. Chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, chronic lyme disease, back pain, are all things that sincere people truly are suffering from...that may be mainly psychological/psychosomatic but lots of people refuse to consider it. Probably due to the general dismissal of mental illnesses and being told for years "it's all in your head". I think partly, people with these conditions are sometimes accused (or think they're being accused) of malingering; I don't think that's the case very often, I think they legitimately feel the symptoms they report, but the root cause may be in the mind/brain rather than the rest of the body.<p>Yes, some back pain is due to repetitive stress injuries or physical structures out of place or whatever. But as this study shows, looks like it has a strong psychological component as well. I suspect we'll (some day) get better treatments for all the things I mention, if mental illness stigma ends and they can be honestly considered from all possible causes.<p>Edit: to be clear, I'm not saying that <i>all</i> cases of back pain or CFS or whatever are psychosomatic - just that it shouldn't be dismissed, especially when the treatments are relatively low-risk.