Texas
PRIDE Dallas was one of the first functional restoration facilities in the United States. Run by Thomas Mayer, MD, and his wife, Holly, it combines an excellent physical rehabilitation program with superb psychological support, making it a top choice for people who really want to get back to work.
Each year, the American Pain Society gives a Clinical Center of Excellence in Pain Management Award to five or so pain management facilities around the country. Here you’ll find the index, all the way back to 2007. Not all of them offer multidisciplinary chronic pain programs—some are tiny, community-based programs—but it is a good place to start. Be sure to click on the detailed descriptions of each year’s winners.
Have a look at the website of Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing. PROP’s mission is to: “reduce opioid-related morbidity and mortality by promoting cautious and responsible prescribing practices.”
Believe me, you’re going to get an eyeful.
Illinois
Entropy Physiotherapy and Wellness specializes in treating complex conditions and restoring hope. If you're being limited by pain, incontinence, or 'old age', we are the right clinic for you.
Pennsylvania
Cognitive behavior therapy focuses on helping clients solve current problems and get better as quickly as possible. The Beck Institute strives to foster highly supportive, compassionate, and collaborative relationships with clients and to tailor treatment to their particular difficulties and preferences. Clients learn specific techniques to change their unhelpful thinking, behavior, and emotional responses — skills they can use for the rest of their life to overcome their current difficulties and to stay better.
The pain system involves all of our body’s systems and is a sensible and necessary system that functions to protect our bodies from a perceived threat. Pain changes the way we move, think and behave, so that we take the necessary steps vital for healing or safety.
Sometimes the pain system can be ‘faulty’ and act in unusual ways. Chronic pain or persistent pain is pain that lasts longer than 3 months – beyond the healing period of tissue damage. This generally means that you experience pain despite having no new damage to the tissue. Pain does however impact on your ability to carry out your normal activities, whether these are at home or work, or in social or recreational settings.
People with chronic pain will face different problems and barriers that prevent them from living their normal lifestyle, and stop them from achieving their goals.
In order to help you with these barriers we have developed our Chronic Pain Course in conjunction with the Department of Pain Medicine at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. The course takes a multidisciplinary approach to pain management and is based on the effective Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) model. In this course you will learn CBT skills to help better manage your chronic pain and improve your quality of life.
Watch the lectures from Stanford’s Back Pain Education Day 2015, especially Rafael Pelayo, MD on The Connection Between Sleep and Back Pain and Jiang Ti Kong, MD on Acupuncture for Back Pain.
Watch all nine videos below:
California
Dr. Wolf Mehling is an expert in the areas of family and community medicine and integrative medicine and is on the staff of UCSF’s Osher Center for Integrative Medicine.
New York
John E. Sarno, MD, was a pivotal figure in the arena of pain management because of his hotly debated approach to the diagnosis and management of back pain. You can read an interview with him here. Since Sarno’s retirement in 2012, Ira Rashbaum, MD, has taken over the care of his patients, and also sees new patients. Sarno passed away in June 2017.
Contributed by Caryn S. Feldman, PhD, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago Center For Pain Management:
In the book “Living Well with Pain and Illness: The Mindful Way to Free Yourself from Suffering,” author Vidyamala Burch shares her experience with disability and chronic back pain, and the way that mindfulness practices helped her overcome her suffering and renew her life with a positive outlook and decreased pain. Find the book on Amazon.
Here’s a good list of doctors who treat Mind Body Syndrome (MBS) and Tension Myositis Syndrome (TMS) across the country. The work they do is similar to the psychophysiological approach of Dr. David Schechter, another doctor featured in this resource section, and the acclaimed Dr. John Sarno, who developed the approach.
California
Dr. David Schechter, who specializes in mindbody medicine, practices the psychophysiological approach to pain, based off Dr. John Sarno’s work, at his private practice in Southern California. (There is a website dedicated to the psychophysiological approach, on which Schechter and similar doctors are featured.) He picks up where John Sarno, MD, leaves off.
Dr. Ronald D. Siegel, Michael H. Urdang, and Dr. Douglas R. Johnson have written Back Sense: A Revolutionary Approach to Halting the Cycle of Chronic Back Pain. The book does a great job of exploring the influence of stress and tension, and offers an escape route.
This video provides a brief introduction to Tai Chi with Dr. Yang, as a sample of what you might find on the full DVD. Tai chi is an extremely popular and very gentle physical way to fight stress and reduce anxiety.
There is also a DVD available for purchase in which Dr. Yang presents gentle exercises to ease lower back pain in the tradition of Qigong (pronounced chee-kung), “the art of using the mind to direct the energy within your body to improve health and vitality.” The DVD serves as an introductory guide for beginners, going over the principal concepts of qigong as well as detailing the exercises.
