Suffering from a back injury often results in physical effects that can take a long time to recover from.
However, back injuries may also have an emotional or mental impact. These impacts are often just as severe and problematic as their physical counterparts.
Chronic pain and mental health
The International Association for the Study of Pain discusses the mental impact of back injuries. This is studied in the context of chronic pain, i.e. a persistent pain that is present in a victim’s life for an extended period of time.
Chronic pain is known to cause numerous mental side effects and incite issues like anxiety or depression. In some cases, it can even cause trauma or stressor-based disorders, like post-traumatic stress disorder.
The stress and exhaustion of chronic pain
The idea of dealing with pain every day is enough to stress most people out, let alone having to live through it. On top of that, many chronic conditions do not have a strict timeline by which healing occurs. In essence, this means it is impossible to guess when the pain will actually stop or get better.
Facing an uncertain future that is potentially full of pain can be enough to cause some extreme mental distress in many back injury sufferers.
Pain can also be a mental distraction. People spend so much time focusing on how they physically feel that they begin to detach from life as they once experienced it. This can lead to a deterioration in social relationships and may even put someone’s job at risk, all because of the struggles of a back injury.
