VHA Pain Management

Living with chronic pain is challenging. It often feels like you just need the right medication or treatment to take the pain away. But often that’s not enough, especially with chronic pain. In fact, the best any medication or medical procedure has given you, or ever could give you, is 25 or 30 percent relief.

There are many other approaches to managing chronic pain, and better relief is often found when medications and invasive interventions are combined with or even replaced by active rehabilitation and education approaches, and behavioral-psychological treatments. This supports and strengthens the capacity of the person living with chronic pain to manage his/her symptoms in a way that fosters a more satisfying and vital life. In fact, rehabilitation through cognitive, behavioral, and physical reactivation treatments (also called functional restoration) often lessens or avoids the need for medications and other more invasive procedures. 

► ACPA - Stanford Resource Guide to Chronic Pain Management 

Living Better with Chronic Pain – A Resource for Veterans

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When you have pain, you naturally protect your body, by restricting activity and seeking medical help. But over time, if the pain lasts, you may become trapped in a vicious cycle of muscle loss, avoidance, loss of normal function, and negative feelings. Additional costs may include strained relationships, job loss, problems with depression and low self-esteem, less time with family, fewer valued activities, lower quality of life, and over time, more pain. Pain is biopsychosocial from the beginning so changed from ‘it starts as physical’ since it is impacted by various factors the entire way, even when acute. No one approach is enough to help with pain by itself. Chronic pain must be addressed from many directions.

Veterans/Public Pain Management - Resource Topics