Welcome to the last article in our series Why You Should See a Pain Management Psychiatrist.  This week we’ll look at using newer treatments such as mirror therapy and graded motor imagery for pain.

When you have chronic pain, pain signals get “stuck” in pain-mode, no longer providing helpful information to you.  Chronic pain creates actual changes in your brain.  As well, when you’re in pain, you often use your body part less, so there are less signals of normal movement registering in your brain.  This can create a downward cycle:

Pain →
less use of your body →
fewer “normal movement” signals competing with pain signals →
more pain →
less use of your body, etc.

How can you break this cycle?

These newer treatments are based on the concept that re-training your brain can decrease pain.  These are the treatments I’m most excited about, and have been having good success working with patients with many conditions to help decrease pain.

Mirror therapy uses your visual system to “see” normal movement and reassure your brain that it no longer needs to produce pain signals.  Graded motor imagery is a step-wise program aimed at breaking up movement into components, allowing your brain to slowly resume normal movement without producing pain.

Mirror therapy has been shown to be helpful in:

• early CRPS
• phantom pain
• stroke
• low back pain

Graded motor imagery has been shown to be helpful in:

• chronic CRPS
• phantom limb pain

Ongoing research is helping us learn more about these exciting treatments and fine-tune our use of them.

Click here to read other articles about these newer brain-based treatments.

Other articles in this series:

1. Why comprehensive treatment works better
2. Benefits of a psychiatric evaluation
3. Treatment of psychiatric symptoms
4. Using psychiatric medications for pain
5. Learning psychological skills
6. Making positive behavioral changes
7. Making positive psychological changes
8. Benefits of supportive therapy
9. Benefits of a pain support group
10. New brain-based treatments