Factors Affecting the Impact of Pain and Painful Experiences on the Exceptional Child

Abstract

Pain is often regarded as a symptom associated with an underlying damage to the body, resulting from disease, accidental trauma, or medical procedures such as surgery. Under these circumstances its etiology is organic. In the absence of organic origin, the presence of pain may be regarded as psychogenic: It is nonetheless real and uncomfortable. When the continued pain experience is temporally displaced from the initial insult, a transition from an acute to a chronic pain condition has occurred. For the exceptional child, the potential incidence for pain is increased as a result of additional physical conditions requiring medical intervention. Additional psychological factors such as cognitive delay and emotional disturbance may then interact with developmental factors, exaggerating pain perception and interfering with coping abilities. This attentuation of coping skills ultimately has impact upon quality of life as well as more direct deficits in educational and psychological functioning. This paper discusses these interacting factors as well as intervention approaches to reducing this debilitating condition.