Williams and Johnson present a strong argument against seeing chronic pain as an example of somatisation or as a medically unexplained symptom.1 They are concerned that such perspectives encourage undue psychologisation of physical complaints, and might be prejudicial to good patient care. They are particularly critical of documents produced by the Increasing Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) programme and Commissioning Support for London (CSL), as examples of initiatives which may lead to chronic pain sufferers being managed by practitioners without adequate grounding in the types of pain management strategies supported by NICE guidelines or by the Cochrane Pain, Palliative, and Supportive Care Group.
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