You can’t have chronic pain, you are too young!

It is often assumed that chronic pain is something that only affects adults, and that children or adolescents with pain only experience minor pain and disability. However, chronic pain can be quite common among adolescents. In addition, of those adults who develop chronic spinal pain, most experience it for the first time during adolescence, suggesting adolescent spinal pain is an important public health concern. For this reason, members of the Pain-Ed team have been involved in several studies examining chronic spinal pain among adolescents. A recent study by some of our research group at Curtin University, West Australia showed that low back pain can have a substantial impact among adolescents, such as seeking professional assistance, using medication, missing school/work, limiting normal or recreational physical activity and decreasing quality of life. The impact of low back pain was highest among females and among those with other spinal pains.