Psychogenic Pain
(psychalgia)
Psychogenic Pain Is:
the nocebo effect
For example, if you are on a medication and you read the bottle to discover that headaches are a side effect, it is a lot more likely that you will experience a headache than if you hadn't read the bottle.
When/in who psychalgia occurs:
-Normal, mentally healthy people can experience psychalgia during or after times of social rejection, grief, stress, or other emotional events.
Psychogenic Disease
-Examples of this are psychogenic seizures, psychogenic tremors and psychogenic pain.
-Most forms of fibromyalgia are psychogenic diseases. (Most people develop it after a traumatic event or loss.)
Examples: Disorders with psychogenic pain as a symptom
-Anxiety Disorder: when people are severely anxious, stomach aches, head aches, or other various pain can occur
- Hypochondriasis: in this disorder, people fear having illnesses so much they start to feel the symptoms of some of the feared illnesses.
Treatment For Psychogenic Pain
-antidepressants or anti anxiety drugs
-non narcotic painkillers
-In some cases, meditation has been known to help reduce Psychalgia