Over the past two decades, as the opioid crisis has shaken the public’s view of painkillers and pharmaceutical companies have come under fire for their marketing practices, many patients are looking for alternatives. One of the leading contenders has become treating pain with talk therapy.
Psychologists, therapists and social workers have quietly become a crucial part of pain treatment programs, proving to be as effective or more so than medication. In 2018, the medical journal The Lancet went so far as to recommend education and psychological treatment as first-line interventions for chronic low back pain, before pharmacological treatment.
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