The Legitimacy of Pain as an Object of Study

Abstract

Pain, as a multidimensional phenomenon, must be tackled from different perspectives. The sociological perspective is one of the less frequent approaches in the bibliography. The main results of a pioneering study about the social legitimacy of pain are set forth in this paper, analyzing citizens' pain today, the feelings it causes in them, the type of pain they suffer, and how this type of pain has an influence on the perception of their own pain and that of others. A quantitative design was adopted, through a cross-sectional survey of general population living in Spain (n = 1600) conducted online in 2021. The results point out that a high percentage of citizens were in pain when they took the survey, even if they stated that they were in good health. In general, feeling pain means having a worse quality of life. Having pain of a psychological origin involves higher levels of shame or guilt, as well as the feeling of being judged by others, than the other types of pain. The pain caused by cancer is the one with the highest social support, followed by the grief caused by the death of a loved one, while the pain with the lowest support is the one caused by alcoholism or obesity. Feeling that one's pain is understood and legitimized by others is fundamental to being able to face it, that is why it is important to carry out studies analyzing pain from this perspective.