TY - JOUR T1 - Persistent pain: not a medically unexplained symptom JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 638 LP - 639 DO - 10.3399/bjgp11X601479 VL - 61 IS - 591 AU - Amanda C de C Williams AU - Martin Johnson Y1 - 2011/10/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/61/591/638.abstract N2 - At the same time as the study of pain is flourishing as a basic and applied science, and attention is paid nationally to reducing the gap between provision and need (chronic/persistent pain is a Royal College of General Practitioners priority for 2011-2013),1,2 there are moves to categorise it as a medically unexplained symptom (MUS). This is puzzling on a scientific level, and seriously retrogressive at a healthcare level.It is nearly 50 years since Melzack and Wall published their gate control theory,3 presenting an integrated model of physiological and psychological processing, and challenging existing dualistic interpretations of many pain phenomena:‘The contemporary custom of assigning the cause of pain either to peripheral pathology or to mental pathology is too simple because it ignores the subtle dynamic properties of peripheral tissue and of the nervous system … which could explain many … diseases … which have previously been attributed to mental disorders.’3On the … ER -