DesertView Performing Arts Center
39900 Clubhouse Drive
Tucson, AZ 85739

Schedule:
6:30pm - 8:oopm

Cost:
$15 each or all four for $50

Save the Dates:
April 18, 2019
July 11, 2019
November 14, 2019

April 18, 2019
Title:  The Pain of Trauma, The Trauma of Pain: Psychological Trauma Has Physical Consequences

Presenter: Bennet E. Davis, MD

Description:

More than the pharmaceutical companies, it is the way western medicine teaches us to think about pain that has fostered overprescribing of opioid.  Our concept of pain has had other consequences, it has led us to assume that the recent increase in overdose deaths is the consequence of an epidemic of addiction.  But our nation’s response, which should work if we are in fact dealing with a crisis of addiction, has backfired: reducing prescription opioid and introducing addiction resources has not stemmed the crisis.  Just the opposite, CDC statistics show that the crisis has deepened.   We must be missing something.  Perhaps the way we view pain has not only led us into an overprescribing disaster, perhaps it is preventing us from finding the way out.

This presentation illuminates a way out.  Dr. Davis builds on what we know about pain to explain why so many “chronic pain patients” have pain without tissue damage that responds to opioids.  This population is defined then compared and contrasted to people with painful tissue pathology and to “addicts” with opioid use disorder.  Dr. Davis reviews validated CDC statistics on the prevalence of severe psychological trauma in America, research into the physical health effects of psychological trauma, recent research into exactly who is being prescribed the majority of opioid in America, and his and other experts experience with “chronic pain patients”.  The inexorable conclusion is that we are not faced with a crisis of addiction but rather one of misdiagnosed and inappropriately treated psychological trauma.  Dr. Davis proposes this conclusion as the explanation for the failure of our current approach to the opioid crisis.  Trauma informed diagnosis and treatment is required to solve the crisis, and Dr. Davis ends with a description of how this might look.”

Objectives:

The purpose of this presentation is to inform Americans that there is a trauma epidemic which is unrecognized, that psychological trauma has physical consequences that include causing pain, and to outline next steps.  The goal is to create advocacy for better integration of behavioral and mental health specialties.

Bennet E. Davis, MD, is the director of the Pain Recovery Program at Sierra Tucson. He is board certified in anesthesiology and pain medicine. Dr. Davis completed his undergraduate work at Stanford University in Stanford, CA, and received his medical degree from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH. He then trained in orthopedic surgery and anesthesiology at the University of New Mexico and University of California, Irvine. He completed his fellowship in Manchester, England, after finishing residency training.    Dr. Davis served as founder and director of the University of Arizona Pain Center from 1995 to 2002, where he was also director of the Pain Fellowship Program and co-founding faculty of the Arizona Cancer Center. In 2002, he and his colleagues founded Arizona’s first and only adult pain clinic to achieve American Pain Society Center of Excellence, The Integrative Pain Center of Arizona, which operated as one of the nation’s few models for interdisciplinary pain care until November 2017.   He is involved in organized medicine as past president of the Pima County Medical Society, and is active on a national level in teaching as medical director for CHC Pain ECHO, a telemedicine teaching program for primary care providers across the nation. He serves on numerous advisory boards for health policy. His latest article, “A New Paradigm for Pain?” was featured in The Journal of Family Practice and provides an updated definition of pain.

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