I’m in Bangkok this week for the World Congress on Pain, the field’s biggest international gathering. One session stood out: researchers studying digital storytelling for people living with chronic pain.
Stories help people find good information about treatment and pain science. But this group, including Lauren Heathcote of King’s College London, is studying something more: whether telling and hearing stories can be part of healing itself.
They’re working with people with osteoarthritis, who often hear myths like “exercise always makes it worse.” (It doesn’t.) And with survivors of childhood cancer who live with pain and hypervigilance long after treatment.
It was exciting to see this work funded, studied, and put into practice. Pairing real stories with real science is what we’re doing here at Notes on Pain. Watch my short dispatch from Bangkok above.
