Nicholas Kristof's essay "Why Americans Feel More Pain" (New York Times, 3 May 2023) discusses suffering as a symptom of societal dysfunction. Part of the problem is linked to drugs (including alcohol); part is from trauma, abuse, oppression; part comes with age and poverty, injury and stress.

There are hopeful approaches, Kristof writes:

Dr. Daniel Clauw, director of the Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center at the University of Michigan, believes that we already have a toolbox of remedies that can help 80 percent or 90 percent of chronic pain sufferers but that our treatment system and insurance protocols betray those in need.

“We’ve really over-medicalized pain,” he told me. His first recommendation to patients with chronic pain is simple: Get more sleep and exercise. There’s no simple solution, he emphasized, and it takes work by patients to recover.

“I’m a huge advocate of physical therapy,” he added, and he also sees positive results from yoga, acupuncture, acupressure, cognitive behavioral therapy and meditation.

He mimics addressing a patient: “Mrs. Jones, I don’t know if acupuncture is going to work for you, or if it’s going to be physical therapy or chiropractic manipulation. But I do know that if you try three of these non-pharmacologic therapies, on average one of the three will work pretty well. And then the next year we’ll try two or three more, and you’ll get better yet.”

... and so much more to be done.

(NYT gift link) - ^z - 2023-05-07