However, it also affects everyone around them. At the beginning, others are supportive and caring. As time goes by, co-workers, friends, the whole support system begins to wear thin. Chronic pain has an affect not only on persons in pain but also on their families or significant others. Soon they, too, find that large parts of their lives are controlled by the pain.
Chronic pain creates many different types of suffering.
In most cases, chronic pain does not respond to conventional medical treatment. Chronic pain may never completely go away. What is more, the cause of chronic pain is often difficult or impossible to find. It simply means that, using the information available today, medical specialists cannot define a cause for the pain. Cases of hypochondria or malingering are extremely rare.