Demographics: Pain in Michigan
One in five Michigan adults (about 1.2 million) experience some form of chronic, ongoing pain. This is just one of the conclusions revealed in the State of Pain study of 1,500 adults living in Michigan. This telephone survey was conducted by EPIC/MRA, a prestigious Lansing polling firm, to gauge the extent that pain interferes with daily life of Michigan citizens. The survey was the most extensive study of pain ever conducted in the state, and among the most extensive of its kind in the nation.
The study revealed that 7 in 10 pain sufferers (70%) continue to experience pain or have their pain only partially relieved after consultation with a health care professional. Twenty-two percent of those in the survey state that pain treatments made their pain condition worse. Half of those in the survey with chronic pain are unaware of pain centers or treatment advances; and two-thirds have never seen a specialist.
Dr. Joel Saper, Director of MHNI, states, “What the survey says, loudly, is that pain continues to be an enormous problem for a large percentage of Michigan citizens and an illness in which the majority of people do not have access to advanced levels of care.”
Chronic Pain's Impact
Key findings of the State of Pain study are:
- 35% (about 400,000 people) missed more than 20 days of work in the last year because of pain.
- 10% of pain sufferers (about 120,000 people) have thought about committing suicide.
- 21% of pain sufferers (about 252,000 people) visited a hospital emergency room an average of four times in the last year for pain.
- 13% (about 440,000) of pain sufferers said that they had been denied access to pain medications, medical devices and referrals to other professionals and/or pain centers.
- 42% of respondents who suffer from pain indicated that their relationships with spouse, family, and fellow workers have worsened because of pain.
- 48% of pain sufferers reported that they frequently felt depressed and hopeless about their pain condition.
Dr. Saper says that the relationship between pain and depression is not always recognized and treated by health care professionals. “Pain is where the mind and body come together . . . It’s a complex medical management problem that calls for more than one kind of treatment. What is needed are treatments for the pain, and also for the suffering, the depression, the failure to work, and changes that occur in the family. When treating pain one must treat the person with the pain as well as the pain of the person."
