What is it about?
This review summarizes the state of the evidence for treating chronic pain in torture survivors. Pain in torture survivors is often considered a symptom secondary to mental health illness and not targeted directly. Instead, combined interventions are mainly directed at posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. Most studies noted promising preliminary results and planned to conduct trials to increase the reproducibility and quality of their pilot data.
Featured Image
Photo by Noah Dustin von Weissenfluh on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Refugees and asylum seekers who are torture survivors are not well-represented in research because there is often a hesitation to engage in research with extremely vulnerable populations. However, given the exponential rise of refugee populations globally, healthcare providers across the world will increasingly encounter and care for these patients.
Perspectives
I learned a lot doing this review with my team. I generally work with asylum seekers and refugees, and the issue of chronic pain is often underreported and ignored. Chronic pain has many underlying causes, and in refugees who are torture survivors, it seems to be even more difficult to treat due to the many layers of trauma, requiring close collaboration between social service providers, mental health professionals, and pain-specialized medical doctors.
Tanzilya Oren
RUSA LGBTQ+
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Treatments and interventions addressing chronic somatic pain in torture survivors: A systematic review, PLOS Global Public Health, March 2024, PLOS,
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgph.0003070.
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