Overview

A unique compilation of voices that speak to the phenomenon of persistent pain and how it can be better communicated.  What is pain—and how do we communicate it? Persistent pain changes the brain and nervous system so that it can no longer warn of danger. However, despite being a major cause of disability globally, pain remains difficult to communicate. As language struggles to bridge the gap between those who suffer from pain and those who are trying to help, this book shares leading research into the potential value of visual images and non-verbal forms of communication as means of improving interactions between clinicians and their patients. Accompanied by vivid photographs co-created with those who live with pain, the volume integrates the voices of leading scientists, academics, and contemporary artists to provide a manual for understanding the meanings of pain for healthcare professionals, pain patients, students, academics, and artists.  

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9781787352650

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Reviews

This is a majestic volume. Visually striking, intellectually challenging, and experientially transformative, this book promises to change how everyone encounters pain. -- Rob Boddice, Freie Universitat Berlin. Deborah Padfield's book Perceptions of Pain introduced a ground-breaking strategy through which photography became an effective tool to interpret pain-an aspect of human experience that can, so often, appear inexplicable. The powerful images in this book are further evidence of the collaborative strength of photography and its special ability to give voice to those who are excluded. -- Dewi Lewis, Publisher A work that brings photographic, figurative, and poetic images of chronic pain to the clinic and demonstrates how visual, communicative frameworks can re-voice experiences and diagnoses of pain. This major, deeply reflective collection of papers represents a turning-point in defining the multifaceted importance of painscapes in clinical, therapeutic, and humanistic advocacy work. It firmly situates the arts and humanities, alongside the sciences, in responding to the pressing need for new strategies to alleviate chronic pain. -- Brian Hurwitz, King's College London Pain and its ever-increasing numbers of sufferers inhabit a kind of night world isolated from the 'normal' day world. 'A bandage hides the place where each is living,' W.H. Auden once wrote, while we, the healthy, 'stand elsewhere.' Encountering Pain is an attempt to narrow this rift by making sure sufferers are heard, seen, and able to speak again-so that they might be better understood. Padfield and Zakrzewska have assembled an impressive team of patients, healthcare providers, artists, and academicians, all determined to make pain more visible and communicable. The authors compellingly demonstrate that language-whether in the form of words, gestures, or images-is a necessary first step towards alleviating pain. That it can often be as powerful as medicine. -- Dr. David Biro, SUNY Health Science Center in Brooklyn and author of The Language of Pain: Finding Words, Compassion, and Relief.

Author Information

Deborah Padfield is a visual artist, Senior Lecturer in Arts & Health Humanities at St George's, University of London and Lecturer (Teaching) at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL, where she undertook both her PhD and post-doctoral fellowship. Collaborating with leading clinicians and academics, her research explores the potential of photographic images, co-created with people with pain, to facilitate doctor-patient communication. Joanna M. Zakrzewska is a dentally and medically qualified oral physician who is a consultant in the facial pain unit at University College London Hospital (UCLH).

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