Pain management is a growing area of interest for many health care professionals. It is a truly integrated approach involving a team comprising medical practitioners, clinical psychologists, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and nurse practitioners. Different professions may work together but the approach may also be adopted by individual practitioners. Pain Management: An Interdisciplinary Approach deals specifically with the management of potentially chronic l pain, how to assess patients with pain, the factors involved in the development of chronic pain and the setting up and running of a pain management programme. The main focus is on musculoskeletal and fibromyalgic type pain. Cancer pain is not addressed. The authors address not only what is recommended in the management of pain but also whether and why it is done, thereby covering not only the content of interdisciplinary pain management but also the processes involved. An increasing number of courses on pain management are now being set up around the world. This has created an increasing and continuous demand for a textbook which could be used by those attending these courses and which would provide others who have to deal with the problems as part of their day to day practice with guide to best practice. The book provides an essential reference for all health professionals involved in all aspects of pain management. Provides extensive background material and covers broad issues which other books lack Focuses on not only what is done with the management of pain but whether and why it is done Includes the nuts and bolts of setting up and running a pain management programme Addresses the application of pain management programmes in a wide range of fields Has a multidisciplinary approach and therefore appeals to a multidisciplinary market Two new co-authors: Kay Greasley and Bengt Sjolund. Major restructuring of chapters and rewriting of content with new authors for many of them. Greatly increased discussion of biopsychosocial management in individual clinical practice. Addresses the needs of the individual practitioners as well as those working in specialised pain management units. Includes more on primary care and secondary pain prevention. Expanded discussion of the clinical-occupational interfaces. Particular emphasis on the identification and targeting of modifiable risk factors for chronic pain and prolonged disability. The following topics stregthened throughout: communication, the nature of groups, medication and iatrogenics. Potential of an evidence-based biopsychosocial approach to pain management highlighted.

For over three decades, an Ideological Surround Model (ISM) has pursued theoretical and methodological innovations designed to enhance the 'truth' and 'objectivity' of research into psychology and religion. The foundational argument of the ISM is that psychology as well as religion unavoidably operates within the limits of an ideological surround. Methodological theism, therefore, needs to supplement the methodological atheism that dominates the contemporary social sciences. Methodological theism should operationalize the meaningfulness of religious traditions and demonstrate empirically that the influences of ideology cannot be ignored. The ISM more generally suggests that contemporary social scientific rationalities need to be supplemented my more complex dialogical rationalities. Beliefs in secularization should also be supplemented by beliefs in trans-rationality.