What should you know about long term back pain?

Dealing with back pain in the short term is enough to give anyone a hard time. Unfortunately, long term back pain can be even more disruptive and difficult to deal with.

If you are a back pain sufferer, what should you know about how back pain affects people in the long term?

The lifespan of a back injury

The International Association for the Study of Pain discusses the true impact that back pain can have. Back pain can manifest in numerous ways and stem from many different injury sources. Depending on how severe it is, among other factors, this will determine how long the healing process will last.

Regardless, it will likely be longer than you may have anticipated. On average, even mild to moderate back injuries take weeks or months for a sufferer to fully recover.

When pain lasts this long, or even longer, you may begin to see some of the mental effects tied to chronic pain. Studies over the years have shown a strong tie between chronic pain and mental health disorders like anxiety, depression and even trauma or stressor-based disorders.

Living with chronic pain

It is hard to live with chronic pain, even if it is not debilitating levels of pain. The constant feeling is enough to get under anyone’s skin, and you may even begin to lose interest in things you once loved because you simply cannot maintain the mental or physical energy when also combating constant pain.

The mental, emotional and physical fatigue of chronic pain is a difficult thing for anyone to deal with, and it is why some choose to seek compensation for their injuries.