Psychosocial aspects of cancer pain

Pain, and especially cancer pain, is not a pure nociceptive, physical experience, but involves different dimensions of man, such as personality, affect, cognition, behavior and social relations. Cancer pain is best conceptualized as the convergence of multiple activated systems with feedback mechanisms to a complex, multidimensional model. The psychosocial aspects of this multidimensional model will be analyzed with special emphasis on results from recent research. Although most research has been conducted on the role of affect and cognition in cancer pain, data on other factors such as personality, behavior or social aspects exist and will be presented. In the second part of this paper the implications of these results for therapeutic strategies in clinical work will be discussed. Although a considerable body of knowledge exists to support the hypothesis of a multidimensional model of cancer pain, where psychosocial variables play an important role, only a few studies address the issue of to what degree different factors exercise their influence. This may be different from patient to patient and may change over the course of the disease. Whatever importance these single variables in the multidimensional model of cancer pain may have, the patient is best treated when none of these aspects is neglected in the assessment and all are taken care of in the treatment. A multidisciplinary team, with a psychiatrist as one of the team members, is often best prepared to fulfill this task.