Children and adolescents with severe psychomotor disability

Many children and adolescents with severe psychomotor disability suffer from recurring or constant chronic pain. The causes of chronic pain in children with severe psychomotor disability are just as varied as they are complex.  There are often several causes that mutually reinforce each other.

Additional illnesses or complications occur regularly, such as, for example, spastic cerebral palsy. This is a central paralysis with spasticity in the arms, legs and trunk. These children often also have contractures of the joints, scoliosis of the spinal column and dislocated hip joints, because the femoral head is outside the hip socket. These conditions are “biological” causes of severe to very severe musculoskeletal pain.

Further somatic causes are:

1.      Inflammation of the stomach lining
2.      Acid reflux
3.      Gall and kidney stones
4.      Osteoporosis with bone breaks
5.      Infections
6.      Severe constipation

“Psychosocial” factors also often increase children’s pain. Adolescents are often completely dependent on the help and decisions of others. They are absent from school for long periods because the medical-nursing care they require cannot be provided there. Resulting negative feelings and social exclusion seem to confirm the child in his or her helplessness, also vis-a-vis the pain. As a rule, it is the parents who have rearranged their whole lives in order to care for their sick child, and this without a break. No one cares for them, and many parents can’t manage to look after themselves anymore.