Early screening of pain to prevent it from becoming intractable

The pain of primary care patients remained, in a large number of instances, unexplained after careful physical examination. In the analysis of these instances a correlation was observed between anger and pain in the neck, between fear and abdominal pain and between sorrow and despair and low back pain. A simple test was developed in which the patients assess their own emotional situation. Good correlation makes subsequent manifestation of an organic cause very unlikely. This helps to avoid unnecessary referrals.