"Just Depressed"

Many patients with chronic pain dread those words. "You're just depressed" and "It's all in your head" are many doctors' ways of dealing with pain they can't see. Then, as with so many other attempts, we talk to counselors who eventually realize that though they might help us cope better with our lives for a while but that if we're more depressed than other people, it's more an effect of the constant, unrelenting pain than a cause.

There is, however, a depression/chronic pain cycle or a stress/chronic pain cycle. Stress will make the pain worse; worse pain will make the stress worse. Most of the time, though, pain is independent of depression in the sense that treating any depression does not necessarily help with pain (some medicines treat both for some patients). For chronic low back pain patients, antidepressants have been shown to be no help, but they are still frequently prescribed by doctors who cannot believe that pain without an obvious organic cause can be physical rather than psychosomatic.

If you're running into a wall with the "all in your head" people, remember: you are not alone. It is not all in your head. Do your best at everything you can, then work at being comfortable and in as little pain as possible.