Treating the TMD/Chronic Pain Patient: Psychiatry and Psychology

From the outside, it has been very common for clinicians to dismiss TMJ patients as “crazy,” “difficult,” or “high maintenance.” This sentiment conveyed both a lack of knowledge of TMJ pathology and mental illness on the part of the health professions. Fortunately, the true situation is gradually coming to light, and doctors are gaining an increased appreciation for how connected the mind and body really are. In fact, there is no true separation at all; it has always been something we created to make sense of a system we did not understand. Fortunately, our ideas of how the mind and body interact have evolved, and it is unmistakably critical to be able to assess both the mind and body together in order to ultimately make an ailing person whole again. This chapter is devoted to explaining how psychologists and psychiatrist evaluate, diagnose, and treat TMD/chronic pain patients.