The Utility of Psychosocial and Collaborative Multidisciplinary Treatments in Pain Recovery and Cronic Disease Management

For both clinical and economic reasons, the increasing number of persons living with chronic health conditions such as chronic pain, Lyme disease, somatic symptom disorder and others, represents a public health concern of growing urgency. Emphasizing patient responsibility and acting in a collaborative nature in concert with the provider community, self-management represents a promising strategy for treating chronic disease. Clinically working with individuals to actively identify challenges and self-solve problems associated with their chronic illness decreases physician office visits, unnecessary surgical interventions and billions of unnecessary dollars spent on products claiming to cure the presenting disease. Self-management also shows potential as an effective paradigm across the prevention spectrum (primary, secondary, and tertiary) by establishing a pattern for health as early in the treatment episode as possible and providing strategies for mitigating illness and managing it in later life. Practical applications of self-management of chronic disease will be discussed in this presentation.