Many patients go to the hospital for things such as high blood pressure, migraine headaches (which I have), muscle spasms, costochondritis (chest wall inflammation), etc., and the very thing that’s causing these problems are something such as depression or chronic stress. When doctors prescribe you Advil or Ibuprofen for inflammation or pain, they are really just using a band-aid to temporarily cover the problem, especially if your emotional and psychological pain is masked by a physical ailment. Most times doctors are treating something they are familiar with, that is, a physical problem. Other times they are doing a process of elimination. Some times they are oblivious to your real needs.

Medical doctors truly need to be more aware of this because many patients (you saw the statistics above!) rush to the hospital for physical pain that really needs to be treated with psychological attention. I hope more doctors are trained to become aware of this and the same goes for psychologists. There is a “disorder” called somatization. This disorder is applied to individuals who are persistently in pain but there is no tangible basis for the pain.

In other words, we as doctors need to become more aware of the psycholgical implications of pain, whether psychological or physical.