Attitudes to pain in later life

Can older people live contented and pleasurable lives even when riddled with disabling pain?

Dr Jan Walker, from the University of Southampton will discuss this issue on Thursday 11 July 2002, at the Annual Conference of the Psychologists Special Interest Group in Older People, held at King Alfred’s College, Winchester.

Dr Walker, a Senior Lecturer at the University’s School of Nursing and Midwifery, argues that narrative therapies, rather than reliance on increasingly powerful painkillers, pave the way for those disabled by chronic painful conditions to finding meaning and hope in their lives.

Her recent research showed that older people who understood the reason for their pain, who had developed their own comfort-promoting strategies, were purposively engaged in meaningful activities such as cooking, knitting, producing family memoirs, and bird-watching and were not currently experiencing a significant sense of loss or grief, were more likely to be content, than those who lacked an understanding of their pain and primarily sought relief from medication.

Dr Walker says that more attention must be paid to the needs of the whole person and to finding different ways of making incurable pain more bearable.

PR302