PAIN: THEORY, RESEARCH AND PRACTICE
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PAIN: THEORY, RESEARCH AND PRACTICE
Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue injury or described in terms of such damage. Pain is one of the most common reasons patients seek medical treatment, represents a major clinical, social, and economic problem, and the estimated prevalence of various pain conditions ranges from 8% to as high as 60%. Chronic pain affects 1.5 billion people worldwide and is associated with critical changes in the peripheral and central nervous systems.
Furthermore, pain is often associated with emotional, behavioral, and cognitive changes, which have been reciprocally linked in many experimental and clinical studies. There is an elevated risk of chronic pain in individuals with a history of neuropsychiatric (anxiety, depression, etc.) and neurological (cognition impairments, Parkinson's and Alzheimer's diseases, etc.) diseases. Furthermore, both comorbidities conditions often coexist, respond to similar treatments, worsen each other, and share overlapping biological mechanisms.
In fact, pain is a personal and subjective experience, and something that can only be felt by those it affects has come to be defined as everything that a person feels the way, and when, he/she feels it. Diagnosed and evaluated appropriately, it becomes possible to verify whether the risks of a given pain treatment outweigh the damage caused by the clinical problem, as well as making it possible to choose the best and safest therapeutic approach, be it pharmacological, psychological, nutritional, or based on complementary therapies. The scope of this? Making the best monitoring and analysis of the mechanisms of action of different analgesic drugs, adjusting doses and frequency of administration. In the same way, we could verify the effectiveness of any, or any other, intervention other than medication. Once the therapeutic approach is successful, the pain and displeasure associated with it cease.
By invitation of Dr. Elaine Rabelo Neiva, current editor of the journal Psychology: Theory and Research (Qualis A1; High Impact Factor), from the University of Brasília, we are organizing a special issue of this journal dedicated to Pain: Theory, Research, and Practice. Suggested topics include:
- Definitions of the pain construct
- Analysis of the multiple facets or dimensions of pain
- Diagnostic tools
- Assessment and measurement of pain
- Psychopharmacology of pain
- Recent studies of cannabis for pain management
- Types and categories of pain
- Pain in special populations: elderly, fetal and newborns, children, adults, Linguistic Deficits in Non-Language-Dominant Neurodegenerative Diseases, and people with clinical conditions related to cognitive aging.
- Comorbidities associated with pain, such as anxiety, depression, and interrelationships with social, economic, and cultural factors
- Drug and non-drug treatment and interventions
- Neuroscience and genetics of pain
- The role of artificial intelligence in diagnosing and treating pain
- Models, theories, and applications
We invite you to submit a manuscript via the Journal's electronic system (link: https://periodicos.unb.br/index.php/revistaptp/index) by August 31, 2024. The special issue is expected to be published in the first issue of the journal in 2025. Manuscripts preferably originating from empirical studies must be submitted in English, following the journal's instructions, and in accordance with the standards of the 7th edition of the APA Manual. All submitted manuscripts will be peer-reviewed and selected by guest editors. Twelve manuscripts will constitute the special volume. We also recommend that authors submit, whenever possible, a manuscript in collaboration with other national or international researchers.
Certain of your attention, we are looking forward for your return.
Charging Fees
Submission of articles is free of initial fees. However, upon approval and if the authors are interested in publication, a fee of R$1,000.00 will apply for articles in English. For the inclusion of other languages, the additional fee is R$ 500.00 for each language chosen. It is important to emphasise that the responsibility for translating accepted articles rests exclusively with the authors, who must bear the costs of publication and translation, without the journal providing translators.
Juliana Álvares Duarte Bonini Campos (UNESP-Ar, Brazil)
Maria Ângela Guimarães Feitosa (UnB-DF, Brazil)
Renato Leonardo de Freitas (FMRP-USP, Brazil)
José Aparecido Da Silva (UnB-DF, Brazil)
Guest Editors