Chronic Pain
Chronic pain is very common, but poorly understood in Children. Both physical and subjective factors, such as stress, depression, anxiety, and learned behaviors, affect pain perception. Pain can be classified as acute, chronic, and recurrent, each varying in the proportion of these factors present. Acute pain is brief and has the largest physical component, warning the body of immediate danger. Chronic pain is longer and presents either with a current physical source or after its apparent healing. Chronic pain perception involves fewer physical factors and more subjective factors. Recurrent pain syndromes, commonly headache and abdominal and limb pains, are painful and without apparent physical cause; however, they do not always imply a psychological disorder.
