'Pain garden’ website aims to help chronic pain sufferers

A Teesside University researcher is leading creation of a new website which will help people with chronic musculoskeletal pain understand their pain better.

Professor Denis Martin aims to develop a ‘pain garden’ website using the concept of gardening to illustrate more complex concepts about pain.

Professor Martin has been awarded almost £30,000 from medical research charity Arthritis Research UK to develop the website, working with patients and professional design company Animmersion UK Ltd, based in Middlesbrough. 'The idea behind this project is that complicated information can be clearer and more interesting to learn when presented attractively, using familiar ideas of activities – in this case gardening – to represent more complex concepts,' said Professor Martin, who will be working with colleague Dr Alasdair MacSween.

Using an online questionnaire, people with chronic musculoskeletal pain will score questions about how they feel, and how their pain affects them. Their scores will be represented visually though an image of something found in a garden. For example, ’anxious’ will appear as a tree with expressions showing anxiety. These features will then form a personalised pain garden.

Professor Martin, Professor of Rehabilitation in the University’s Health and Social Care Institute, added: 'The findings will benefit patients in a number of ways. Improving people’s understanding of the complexity of persistent pain may help them to make sense of the different sensations and emotions they experience, and to cope better with the effects of pain.

'We know that people with pain find it troubling and frustrating when others don’t understand what they are trying to cope with. Using the pain garden may make it easier for them to explain their pain to others. We know that people with pain often feel that they are the only ones who are experiencing what they do. The sharing of others’ personal pain gardens may help people to feel less alone.'

Once the pain garden website has been developed, its user-friendliness will be tested on patients, and to see how it can be best used to help people get a better understanding of pain.

One out of every ten people in the UK is in constant or persistent pain for at least three months and even many years, despite trying many different treatments and medicines.

---

Find out more about Arthritis Research UK