Defining Suffering in Pain: A Closer Look at Pain-Related Suffering Through Natural Language Processing

Understanding suffering in the context of pain is a complex and nuanced endeavor. A recent paper offers a definition of pain-related suffering as “a profoundly negative, complex, and dynamic experience arising from a perceived threat to an individual’s sense of self and identity.” This definition underscores the depth and multifaceted nature of suffering, but it also raises important questions about the role of empirical definitions in our approach to pain management.