13/10/2025
When you live with chronic pain and your test results come back “normal,” too often the next thing you hear is, “It’s probably psychological.”
That statement might sound harmless, but being misdiagnosed as a “mind-body case” can have serious consequences. It’s not only dismissive, but it can delay real treatment, compound emotional harm, and keep people trapped in unnecessary suffering.
Here are the three biggest risks of that kind of misdiagnosis:
1. Delayed or Missed Medical Diagnosis
When pain is labelled as purely psychological, doctors stop looking. Real underlying conditions—like small-fiber neuropathy, autoimmune disease, or connective-tissue disorders—can go undetected for years. The longer a condition remains untreated, the more damage it can cause, both physically and psychologically.
2. Emotional Harm and Medical Trauma
Being told your pain is “all in your head” invalidates your lived experience. It creates shame, guilt, and confusion, often leading to mistrust in healthcare and reluctance to seek future help. Many people develop trauma from these repeated experiences of dismissal, which only worsens their suffering.
3. Inadequate and Ineffective Treatment
When chronic pain is reduced to a mental narrative, treatment becomes one-dimensional, focused on managing thoughts instead of addressing biological, functional, and lifestyle factors. The result is short-term symptom relief at best, with no long-term improvement in function, wellbeing, or quality of life.
True pain management must take a biopsychosocial approach. One that recognises that pain can involve the brain, the body, and the environment, but is never just one of them.
When you only treat the mind, you’re ignore the rest of the person.
