CHRONIC: How Understanding Your Pain Can Change Your Pain
Danna Krouham's thesis, Chronic: How Understanding Your Pain Can Change Your Pain, is an in-depth analysis of the complexity of the chronic pain system. While researching the intricacy of how chronic pain in the United States is addressed, Danna decided to zero in on uncovering the biopsychosocial model of pain. This body of thesis work proposes solutions to help patients understand their own experiences. "By better understanding their pain, they can actually change their pain. By designing a suite of tools and experiences with a unified biopsychosocial approach, Danna aims to help people understand their pain and reclaim control over their minds, bodies, and souls. This thesis is meant to serve as a learning experience by planting a seed in the reader's mind into unfolding the power the pained have over their pain.
“Health should not be interpreted as the absence of disease, but rather as enhancing one's capability to live in plenitude.”
According to the 2019 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS), "50.2 million adults (20.5%) reported pain on most days or every day." Pain is considered chronic when it persists beyond the healing time, typically lasting 6 months or longer– anything less is regarded as acute pain. The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage." Danna challenges this definition, believing it makes sense but is not entirely correct. Humans are an emotional, psychological, and social species. Neuroscience shows us that thoughts, emotions, and attentional processes live in parts of our brain that contribute to and may be responsible for pain expression. Although we experience pain in our bodies, pain is actually constructed by the brain. Danna sets herself to explore how to take the realm of pain from the invisible to the visible through three design proposals.
Finley Health: Stopping at Acute
Finley is an AI-based symptom assessment app combined with lifestyle medicine leading patients to get a precise reference of symptoms and recommendations for treatment. Finley helps patients with musculoskeletal pain learn and understand what their symptoms mean to avoid escalating from acute to chronic pain.
Finley works similar to a diary: after logging in individual symptoms, the app’s AI technology will search for patterns in the patient's entries. After entering the same symptom multiple times, they will be prompted to complete a pain assessment to better understand where those symptoms are coming from, followed by a lifestyle questionnaire to examine other possible causes.
The patient can then share their tracking and assessment results with their Primary Care doctor who will help them in reaching a better and more accurate diagnosis to further recommend possible treatments.
Belly Brains: Healthy Gut, Happy Mood
Belly Brains is a meal-kit delivery service for people with diagnosed chronic depression. The kit is designed to support the mind and body by working with nutritional foods that boost mood and energy levels. Belly Brains benefits customers by providing fast and easy meal prep kits that positively impact their minds and body and encourage cognitive behavioral therapy by cooking, thus contributing to relieving symptoms of depression.
Danna shares that Belly Brains was “her way of envisioning how symptoms of depression can drop significantly for people by changing from a highly processed, high-carbohydrate diet to a Mediterranean-inspired diet."
As Ananda Kaplan RDN explained to Danna during her research, "the first step to recovering from chronic depression is understanding that you have control over your life and choices. Having a menu to choose from and cooking immediately begins reverting those symptoms. We have to focus on a high intake of Omega-3, high fiber, prebiotic sources, and no highly processed foods to relieve the inflammation that may be causing depression."
Pain Lab: Where Pain Transforms
Pain Lab is an outdoor interactive experience that helps people of all ages understand, express, and release their internal/personal pain by acknowledging it, visualizing it, and sharing it with others. Pain Lab provides a medical test tube for each participant to fill out with various selected materials to express the color, smell, and texture of their pain. As Danna explains, “When you visualize your pain, you understand it, and then you can change it.”
Many people living with pain have never had the opportunity to interact with their pain outside of therapy, social circles, or their bedroom. Talking about and "seeing" pain relieves the tension of feeling isolated and can help see it from a different perspective. Pain lab utilizes an art therapy approach, and as Kelsey A. Skerpan, MA, ATR-BC, LMHC shared with Danna during her research, "We give the tools for people to use their hands and their creative minds to break those barriers down and be able to express themselves fully and honestly."
To learn more about Danna Krouham’s work, take a look at her projects in more detail at dannakrouham.com.