I did some Google research on psychological pain. I got over 34 million hits on those terms alone and had to narrow it. I really miss having access to PsychLit, a search engine tool for psych papers and other related mental health professions. So I put the psych pain in quotations to narrow the search. I narrowed it down to 444,000. Yikes. How was I going to get through that many? I decided to go through the first three pages of results. I found what I was looking for and did another search for that. Sometimes you can get lucky and get a free PDF of the research article. I wasn’t lucky this time. I did pay $20 USD for to “look” at the research article. What I found was another psychological pain scale that has been in use for the past six years. I don’t know how I missed this article in my previous searches, but then I have been following ONLY the works and “followers” of Dr. Shniedman.
From what I have read about this article, this is a quantitative research measure for psychological pain. Unlike Jobes’s SSF (Suicide Status Form), which measures multiple psychological pain issues and is a qualitative form, it does not measure anything related to suicidal thinking. This is disappointing. Most of the measures have been for major depression, whereas the research for the SSF has been across all psychiatric disorders.
OMG I just read one of the results that Tylenol would help psychological pain. WTF, ARE YOU SERIOUS??? No wonder there is so much liver failure in this country. But then most people don’t think that this pain is real and only physical pain can be felt. I think this is bogus because I have suffered from psychic pain for a great many years and I can say that it is just as real as any physical pain that I have ever felt. It might not be the same as say the pain from a broken limb but a broken heart hurts just as bad.
In this article that asks is there such a thing as psychological pain? And why it matters. I found this article interesting as he was comparing the pain and grief of losing a child to cancer can be just as painful as a kidney stone.
References
Biro, David. Is There such a thing as psychological pain? And Why it matters. Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 2010.(34).4.658-667
Mee S, Bunney BG, Bunney WE, Hetrick W, Potkin SG, Reist C. Assessment of psychological pain in major depressive episodes. J Psychiatr Res. 2011 Nov;45(11):1504-10. Epub 2011 Aug 9.
midnightdemons7 
“psychological pain: real or not?”
i understand that yes you are not suggesting it isn’t. but the question strikes me as an absolutely bizarre one.
the only way that anyone can reasonably ask that question is if they lie to themselves saying they are in pain when they are not. then maybe they will not be aware that the question is astonishing! there is really very little else to say, except, why listen to someone that asks that makes an issue out of that question any more than someone who starts their palliative care paper asking if anyone really experiences physiological pain?
no perhaps you’re not really in pain – but the question was not framed in terms of whether it was real pain – which just looks like semantics.
what is going on here, the idea that we can mistake experiences of say emptiness for psychological pain? but everyone just knows what pain is because everyone experiences it when they break a leg. and psychological pain is in essence the exact same phenomena but without any physical illness.
LikeLike