Chronic Pain and Possibilities of Intervention in the Context of Psychology: Integrative Review

Abstract

The aim of this integrative review was to characterize the state of the art on the relationship between chronic pain and possibilities of intervention in the field of psychology. Articles published between 2018 and 2022 were searched in the LILACS, Scopus, Web of Science, Pubmed, PsycINFO and Scielo databases. The descriptors used were: "Chronic pain", "Psychology", "Psychosocial Intervention" and "Psychological Intervention". After the selection according to the established criteria, from a total of 825, 11 articles were included that constitute the corpus of this work, which were analyzed with the help of Atlas.ti software. The results pointed to a set of psychological interventions based on psychoeducation for the management of chronic pain. Different approaches to pain control and education programs and group and individual intervention modalities were observed. Psychology appeared linked to multiprofessional work and the proposal of integrality of care, highlighting alternative and non-pharmacological strategies for coping with pain. The studies analyzed showed that pain experiences are impacted by psychological aspects, decisively tensioning the biological dimension of understanding pain.