Lost Voices: Women, Chronic Pain, and Abuse

In this illuminating book, Dr. Nellie Radomsky explores the complexity of chronic pain in women and evidence for its association with abuse--an issue largely unrecognized by medical practitioners. Modern medical training emphasizes diagnosis and cure, but chronic pain problems often have no identifiable organic cause, and the women who suffer are often not listened to in the doctor’s office. Lost Voices: Women, Chronic Pain, and Abuse addresses how women, by gaining knowledge of the ways the medical culture--and the larger culture--have silenced them, may move into a healing process and learn to speak out. The author encourages women in pain to give voice to their buried experiences and shows them that speaking out about their experiences with abuse and chronic pain can be the first step on the road to healing. The author explores the lost voices of women in pain through stories based on her personal encounters with patients in her practice. These women and their case histories help illustrate the interactions of chronic pain and abuse and the complexity of the doctor-patient relationship. Among the many areas Dr. Radomsky examines are: how the medical culture has silenced women chronic pain in women with a history of abuse the relationship of women’s healing processes and the sense of finding and expressing “lost voices” the doctor-patient relationship and obstacles to healing the limitation of medical models with respect to understanding complex chronic pain issues how acute and chronic pain differ and how physicians and patients alike struggle with this understandingScientific but very readable, Lost Voices assists readers in the search for answers to complex pain problems. It is a hope-full resource for women struggling with chronic pain and personal abuse issues and an enlightening guide for physicians, therapists, and others working with these women. Professionals working in the area of chronic pain, readers involved in feminist issues, and academic physicians interested in medicine as culture will find Lost Voices a revealing book.

About the Author

Nellie Radomsky, MD, PhD, a family physician with 16 years experience, is in private practice in Red Deer, Alberta, Canada. She also serves as Clinical Assistant Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Calgary. In addition to her clinical work, she conducts workshops and has presented papers on abuse and chronic pain at national and international medical conferences. Currently, Dr. Radomsky is involved in research on physician education about abuse issues. She is a member of the College of Family Physicians of Canada and the Society of Teachers of Family Medicine, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research.