Psychological models of chronic pain and implications for practice

This brief review article presents the major psychological models of chronic pain, namely the psychodynamic/personality, behavioural, cognitive, cognitive-behavioural and psychophysiological models. Treatment approaches based upon these models are described and their usefulness, limitations and implications for physiotherapy practice are discussed. Since no model has proved to be superior over the others, and given the individuality of patients, it is suggested that the most effective way to apply these models would be to combine the appropriate components of each according to the unique needs of individual patients rather than to follow one particular model to the exclusion of the others.