Chronic pain is pain persisting longer than three months, beyond expected healing time. It affects around one in five Australians and is treated as a condition in its own right, involving changes in how the nervous system processes signals.
Modern care is multimodal: movement based rehabilitation, psychological therapies, sleep treatment and carefully selected medicines, with opioids playing a smaller role than in the past. A regular GP relationship matters, coordinating the plan and reviewing what is helping through scheduled consultations.