Breakfast Workshop D: What Is the Relationship Between Pain and Emotions?

Chairperson: Mona-Dvir Ginzberg

What Is the Relationship Between Pain and Emotions?
Gadi Gilam

Pain is the most common and bothersome symptom that the millions of people ‎suffering from osteoarthritis and rheumatic diseases need to cope with on a daily ‎basis. The chronicity of pain is accompanied by substantial comorbidities with ‎negative affect-related factors, namely depression, anxiety, and anger. Pain is formally ‎defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain as “an unpleasant ‎sensory and emotional experience”. Yet, what does it mean that pain is emotional? ‎And why is it that they are so strongly connected, and yet pain and emotions are ‎studied and treated separately? This breakfast workshop retraces the conceptual, ‎mechanistic, and clinical intersections between these two constructs, illustrated ‎through empirical research in the fields of experimental psychology and cognitive ‎neuroscience, in healthy and chronic pain populations. Highlighting the inherent and ‎complex connection between pain and emotion emphasizes the value and the ample ‎opportunities for exciting new research with translational implications in the field of ‎Osteopathic Medicine and Rheumatology.‎