Living with persistent pain touches every part of a person’s life

Which is why Duchy Health Charity have recently awarded £2,550 to Age UK to support the launch of a new Pain Cafe in St Keverne.

Pain can affect sleeping patterns, the ability to think clearly, self confidence, relationships, mental wellbeing and mood and can ultimately lead to social withdrawal, frustration and immobility due to fear of “overdoing it”. People may look to medication to help them, particularly opioids, and can then find themselves reliant on tablets and needing higher and higher doses as the medication fails to have the desired effect. It can lead to a vicious cycle and downward spiral and stop a person from concentrating on what they can do and enjoy; it can stop them living well, albeit with pain.

Of course there is also a cost to the NHS and the economy to consider. Repeat doctor’s appointments, the cost of prescriptions, the increased risk of admittance to hospital due to opioids and polypharmacy use all cost the NHS a huge amount of money annually. Days lost in sickness and inability to work only adds to the tax burden.

There is an understanding that there is a need to help people with persistent pain to self-manage their condition and to decrease their reliance on medications, however waits for the Pain Clinics are long. Four of the South Kerrier Social Prescribing Link Workers were trained in the Ten Footsteps: Live Well with Pain principles and the team wanted to set up a Pain Café to help people in the South Kerrier area but as with all things, funding was a major hurdle. We were so grateful to be awarded a grant from the Duchy Health Charity and the first of our monthly Pain Cafés was held in September. We are still in our infancy, having held only 3 sessions but the feedback has been really positive so far.