More Power to You

‘How are you?’ Three little words often dreaded by people in pain. Gareth Parsons explains to Paul Evans why these simple social rituals can be so difficult for people in pain and how social interactions can instead be made empowering. Parsons’ work on participatory action research gets people in pain together to recognise the negative attitudes or oppression experienced in daily life and find ways to help themselves. The real experts on pain are not the clinicians of researchers, but the people who live with it every day, he argues.