Psychosomatic pain in the ER

• Sep 9, 2022 • by Paul Ingraham
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Weekly nuggets of pain science news and insight, usually 100-300 words, with the occasional longer post. The blog is the “director’s commentary” on the core content of PainScience.com: a library of major articles and books about common painful problems and popular treatments. See the blog archives or updates for the whole site.

I stumbled across a Very Bad Paper while studying the question of whether psychosomatic pain exists (much more on that topic over the next few weeks).

The insane gist of it — I’m paraphrasing, of course — is that pain in the ER is probably psychosomatic if it can’t be explained… and likely if you’re a woman, a teen, or just if your doctor thinks you’re not the sharpest tool in the shed. 🙄

And not a shred of compelling evidence to support any diagnostic criteria for this “psychosomatic pain.” Just profiling! In 2021. Jebus.