Psychological Treatment for Patients With Chronic Pain
This new edition reflects major advances in chronic pain treatment, equipping psychologists and other mental health care providers with practical, evidence-based tools to improve patient care.
Psychologists often receive limited training in pain management, despite its central role in treating chronic pain. This volume combines core approaches—such as cognitive behavior therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and pain self-management—with emerging, scalable interventions and precision medicine strategies. It highlights new treatment formats, including online and brief interventions, digitally delivered care, virtual reality and AI-supported tools, and targeted approaches for specific populations. Emphasizing innovation, accessibility, and tailored treatment, the book provides clinicians with practical strategies to expand the reach and impact of psychological pain care while complementing traditional therapeutic relationships.
Series Foreword
Ellen Anderson Dornelas
Foreword
Sean Mackey
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
- Chapter 1. The Role of Psychological Factors in Chronic Pain
- Chapter 2. Standard Medical Treatments for Pain and Treatment Decision Considerations
- Chapter 3. Depression, Anxiety, and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder
- Chapter 4. Pain-Specific Psychological Factors
- Chapter 5. Overview of Evidence-Based Psychological and Behavioral Interventions for Pain
- Chapter 6. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, Self-Management, and Brief Treatment Formats
- Chapter 7. Mindfulness Interventions, Hypnosis, and Biofeedback
- Chapter 8. Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Pain Reprocessing Therapy, and Emotion-Focused Treatment
- Chapter 9. Treatment Innovations that Scale Access: Empowered Relief, PainTRAINER, Virtual Reality, and AI
- Chapter 10. Sleep and Fatigue
- Chapter 11. Opioids and Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement
- Chapter 12. Cannabis, Substance Use, and Substance Use Disorder
- Chapter 13. Pain Disparities and Special Populations
- Chapter 14. Social Factors and Intimacy
- Chapter 15. Transforming Pain Care Within Medical Settings
- Chapter 16. Summary, Future Directions, and Conclusions
Resources
References
Index
About the Author
About the Series Editor
Beth Darnall, PhD, is professor of anesthesiology, perioperative, and pain medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine and director of the Stanford Pain Relief Innovations Lab. A pain psychologist-scientist, she leads NIH and PCORI-funded multisite and national studies on scalable behavioral analgesic interventions and patient-centered opioid reduction. Her work centers on developing, investigating, and disseminating solutions that expand access to evidence-based behavioral pain care across populations. She created Empowered Relief®, a 1-session group intervention that rapidly equips individuals with effective pain relief skills for acute, chronic, and postsurgical pain. Empowered Relief® is being delivered in 31 countries and in 9 languages. She is chief science advisor at AppliedVR and helped create the RelieVRx, the first FDA-authorized virtual reality product for chronic low back pain.
Dr. Darnall has three times briefed the U.S. Congress and the FDA on patient-centered pain care and opioid stewardship. She was a scientific member of the NIH Interagency Pain Research Coordinating Committee (2020-2025), served on the CDC Opioid Workgroup (2021), and is author of five books for patients and clinicians.
Dr. Darnall has delivered keynote presentations at national annual pain society conferences in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, The Netherlands, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. In 2018 she spoke on the psychology of pain relief at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. She is the 2027 President of the United States Association for the Study of Pain.
