Targeting Psychosocial Barriers To Reduce Delayed Recovery Cases

In recent years, the managed care industry has focused on pain management solutions to address delayed recovery cases.
However, recent studies show that while pain is an obstacle to returning to meaningful work and life roles, it is not as significant a deterrent as many assume. In fact, some symptom-based interventions, e.g., programs that only focus on pain, can actually increase disability duration rather than minimize it. Increasingly, research is pointing to psychosocial barriers as a more important variable than pain, accounting for more than three times the variance in the magnitude of disability (Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation).