Chronic pain is pain that lasts for more than 3 months, and sometimes for years. Keeping a pain diary and tracking how your pain affects your daily activities can be a useful way to help you understand what makes your pain worse and what helps to relieve your pain. It can also help you describe to your healthcare team how your pain has been affecting you over time. This can be done by keeping a paper diary, or more recently with the use of apps for chronic pain.
App reviews: pain management apps
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If guided by a relevant health professional with phone or email follow up, or self-guided for highly motivated patients.
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Free version
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Pain management apps - help me choose
There are a variety of apps aimed at supporting people with chronic pain. These apps differ in their features and functionality and choosing between the apps is challenging because many of them have been developed without any input from healthcare professionals or undergone objective assessment. A study by Devan H et al, 2019(external link) considered the following attributes to be desirable in apps for pain self-management.
- Self efficacy building where the user is given information on self-management or active coping strategies to improve their ability to control their behaviour ( CBT approaches). For example the app has information and education on pain, activity pacing, exercises, relaxation and breathing, meditation and mindfulness and distraction techniques.
- Self-tailoring where information and support is based on the users symptoms and needs.
- Self-monitoring of symptoms to help users monitor their symptoms, mood, thoughts, and pain intensity using features such as thought diaries; daily activity tracking and pain diaries.
- Goal setting and planning so users can identify, log and track meaningful emotional, physical and social goals such as planning daily activities or planning a specific activity goal.
- Problem solving where users have a plan for dealing with stressful or challenging situations such as having a plan for dealing with flare-ups.
- Partnership between views of patient and clinicians to encourage users to interact with their health care provider and be involved in decision making, by including information or training on assertive communication with health professionals.
- Social support where users have access to others living with persistent pain, to provide emotional, informational, and appraisal support such as a chat group or online community.
- Cultural relevance includes information tailored to cultural beliefs and diverse groups for example has information relevant to different ethnicities, or disabilities.
The study found the following apps to have the largest number of features to support the self-management of pain. The authors noted that none of the apps provided culturally tailored information.
- PainScale – Pain diary and coach
- Curable
- SuperBetter
- Mindfulness Daily.
Other apps you may find helpful
- Sleep apps: Some help you track your sleep habits, similar to a sleep diary, and help you develop good sleep routines, while others try to assist you to fall asleep by using calming visual graphics and relaxing music. Read more about sleep apps.
- Mental health and wellbeing apps: To learn techniques such as guided meditation and mindfulness to help you cope with feels of anxiety, depression and stress. Read more about mental health and wellbeing apps.
- Goal setting, problem solving and motivation apps: To learn more about setting goals, making changes, creating action plans and problem solving. Read more about goal setting, problem solving and motivation apps.
