New NICE guideline: antidepressants and chronic pain — chicken or egg?

Chronic pain is debilitating and depressing. ‘Chronic primary pain has no clear underlying condition or the pain (or its impact) appears to be out of proportion to any observable injury or disease. ’1 In July 2014, Sir Simon Wessely stated in an article in The Times entitled, Pain may be in the mind , that: ‘Many of them [chronic pain patients] have mental health disorders — anxiety, depression, etc’, and that, ‘patients felt dismissed and...