Pain Awareness Week
National Pain Awareness Week is the first week of November. Mark the event by learning about chronic pain in children and teens, and the resources AboutKidsHealth offers for parents and caregivers of children and teens who experience chronic pain.What is chronic pain?
Chronic pain is pain that lasts longer than expected (more than three months) and/or that persists after the regular healing time for an injury or illness has passed. The pain can be continuous, meaning that it never goes away, or it can be recurring, meaning that it comes and goes.
National Pain Awareness Week
What causes chronic pain?
Typically, pain provides a warning signal to the body that something is wrong, such as damage to the body’s tissues from an injury, disease, infection and/or painful medical or dental procedure. With chronic pain, the nervous system continues to signal pain even though the illness or injury has already healed. The following are some related factors that may cause chronic pain to develop:
- your child’s physical health
- how much your child’s pain becomes a focus of attention
- your child’s individual response to pain (e.g., if they avoid painful activities)
- how others respond to your child with pain
Signs and symptoms of chronic pain
A child's age may affect their experience of chronic pain. For this reason, pain is assessed differently in infants and toddlers, young children, older children, and teens. See the resources below for signs and symptoms of chronic pain for each age group, and other considerations for assessing pain:
- Longer lasting pain: How to assess in infants and toddlers
- Chronic pain: How to assess in young children (ages 2 to 5)
- Chronic pain: How to assess in older children (ages 6 to 12)
- Chronic pain: How to assess in teens
For more information about chronic pain in children and teens, including how to treat and manage chronic pain and tips for effective parenting for children and teens with chronic pain, please visit the Chronic pain tab of the Pain learning hub.
AboutKidsHealth is SickKids’ health-education website and features more than 3,500 articles on a range of health topics. For more information on pain and other health topics, visit www.aboutkidshealth.ca.
