Chronic pain doesn’t just hurt your body—it can devastate your mental health. Nearly 40% of adults living with chronic pain also experience clinically significant depression or anxiety (Aaron et al., 2025). For healthcare workers already facing unprecedented burnout rates, the combination of persistent pain and psychological distress creates a dangerous perfect storm. Recognizing when physical pain crosses into mental health crisis isn’t always obvious, especially when you’re trained to power through discomfort. Understanding these warning signs could be lifesaving—for yourself or a colleague.
The Hidden Mental Health Toll of Chronic Pain
Pain changes more than your body. When discomfort persists for months or years, it fundamentally alters brain chemistry and neural pathways.
The brain processes chronic pain differently than acute injury. Your nervous system becomes hypersensitive, amplifying pain signals even after the original injury heals. This neurological rewiring doesn’t happen in isolation—it affects the same brain regions responsible for mood regulation, sleep, and emotional processing.
Research confirms this connection is significant. A 2025 systematic review analyzing data from 347,468 individuals across 50 countries found that 39.3% of adults with chronic pain have clinically significant depression, while 40.2% experience anxiety symptoms (Aaron et al., 2025). These aren’t minor mood fluctuations—these are clinical-level symptoms requiring professional intervention.
What makes this particularly concerning is that many people living with chronic pain don’t recognize their psychological symptoms as connected to their physical condition. They attribute exhaustion to aging, irritability to stress, or hopelessness to personal failure. The pain becomes background noise while depression quietly takes hold.
Why Healthcare Workers Face Compounded Risk
Healthcare professionals occupy a unique and precarious position when chronic pain intersects with mental health.
You already know the statistics are grim. According to the U.S. Surgeon General’s 2023 Advisory on Healthcare Worker Wellbeing, 93% of healthcare workers report stress, 86% experience anxiety, and 76% describe exhaustion and burnout. Among non-clinical healthcare workers—including nursing assistants, medical assistants, and social workers—49% report burnout with 38% experiencing symptoms of depression or anxiety (U.S. Surgeon General, 2023).
Now layer chronic pain onto that foundation of occupational stress.
Healthcare workers face unique barriers to acknowledging pain’s mental health impact. The culture of medicine often glorifies stoicism and self-sacrifice. Admitting vulnerability feels like professional weakness. The perceived stigma associated with mental illness combined with fears about career impact keeps many healthcare workers from seeking help (U.S. Surgeon General, 2023).
Physical demands compound the problem. Twelve-hour shifts on your feet, lifting patients, repetitive movements, and inadequate break time all contribute to musculoskeletal injuries. Back pain, neck strain, and joint problems become “part of the job” rather than conditions deserving treatment.
The Invictus Clinic in Marietta was founded specifically because co-founders Dr. Brandon Grinage and Wesley Karcher, CRNA recognized this unmet need in the healthcare community. Both anesthesia specialists with decades of combined experience saw firsthand how chronic pain and mental health issues were destroying the lives of their colleagues and patients. Since opening in February 2020, they’ve helped hundreds of individuals—including many healthcare workers—find relief when traditional treatments failed.
Critical Warning Signs: When Pain Becomes Crisis
Recognizing the transition from manageable chronic pain to mental health crisis requires attention to specific behavioral and psychological changes.
Social Withdrawal and Isolation
One of the earliest indicators is pulling back from relationships and activities that once brought joy.
You stop accepting dinner invitations because you’re “too tired.” Weekend plans feel overwhelming. Conversations with friends become perfunctory. This isn’t just needing rest after a long week—it’s a fundamental shift in your capacity to connect with others.
Chronic pain makes socializing genuinely difficult. Sitting through a meal hurts. Standing at gatherings exhausts you. But when avoidance becomes your default response and loneliness replaces connection, the pain has begun affecting your mental health.
Sleep Disturbance Beyond Physical Discomfort
Pain disrupts sleep, but mental health crisis brings a different quality of sleeplessness.
Physical pain might wake you when you roll onto an injured shoulder or when medication wears off. That’s expected. Watch for different patterns: lying awake ruminating about the future, experiencing early morning waking with racing thoughts, or feeling exhausted despite adequate sleep hours.
Research identifies sleep problems as a significant predictor of suicidality in individuals with chronic pain (Tang & Crane, 2018). When sleep disturbance shifts from “pain woke me up” to “I can’t turn my mind off,” you’ve crossed into psychological territory requiring intervention.
Increased Irritability and Emotional Reactivity
Pain depletes your emotional reserves, leaving less capacity to manage daily frustrations.
Small annoyances trigger disproportionate reactions. You snap at loved ones. Colleagues describe you as “on edge.” Patients sense your impatience. This isn’t your personality—it’s your nervous system operating in crisis mode.
Healthcare workers often misattribute this irritability to job stress or difficult patients. They’re not wrong—occupational stress contributes—but chronic pain amplifies emotional reactivity in ways that exceed normal workplace frustration.
Hopelessness About the Future
Perhaps the most dangerous warning sign is when pain erodes your sense of possibility.
You stop researching treatment options because “nothing will help anyway.” Planning for the future feels pointless. The thought of living with this pain for decades becomes unbearable. This sense of hopelessness and mental defeat significantly predicts increased suicide risk among patients with chronic pain (Tang & Crane, 2018).
For healthcare workers, this often manifests as career-related despair. You trained for years to help people, but now you can barely make it through a shift. The identity you built around your profession crumbles under the weight of physical limitation.
Substance Use Changes
Monitor shifts in how you manage pain and stress.
An extra glass of wine becomes two or three. You take pain medication slightly earlier than prescribed. Caffeine consumption escalates to combat exhaustion. These incremental changes seem reasonable in isolation but together signal declining coping capacity.
Healthcare workers experiencing burnout show 25% increased odds of alcohol abuse or dependence (U.S. Surgeon General, 2023). When combined with chronic pain, this risk intensifies as individuals seek any available relief from physical and psychological suffering.
Expressing Thoughts of Self-Harm
This demands immediate attention and intervention.
Statements like “everyone would be better off without me” or “I can’t keep living like this” aren’t dramatic expressions of frustration—they’re warning signs of suicidal ideation. Chronic pain is an independent risk factor for suicidality, with individuals experiencing persistent pain facing at least twice the suicide risk of those without chronic pain (Tang & Crane, 2018).
If you or a colleague express these thoughts, treat them as a medical emergency requiring same-day mental health evaluation.
The Neurobiological Connection: Why This Happens
Understanding the biological mechanisms helps remove shame from the experience.
Chronic pain triggers inflammatory processes throughout your body, including your brain. These inflammatory markers affect neurotransmitter function, particularly serotonin and dopamine—the same chemicals targeted by antidepressant medications.
Simultaneously, persistent pain dysregulates the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis, your body’s stress response system. This creates a vicious cycle: pain triggers stress hormones, stress hormones amplify pain perception, and both contribute to depression and anxiety.
Your brain’s reward circuitry also changes. Activities that should release dopamine—accomplishing tasks, spending time with loved ones, enjoying hobbies—stop providing the same satisfaction. This isn’t weakness or lack of willpower. It’s neurochemistry.
The good news? These neurological changes aren’t permanent. With appropriate treatment addressing both pain and mental health, brain function can normalize. Results vary by individual, but many people experience significant improvement in both physical and psychological symptoms when treatment targets the pain-mental health connection comprehensively.
What Healthcare Organizations Get Wrong
Many workplace wellness programs miss the mark entirely when addressing healthcare worker pain and burnout.
Free yoga classes and mindfulness apps, while potentially helpful as supplementary tools, don’t address the root causes. No amount of meditation compensates for unsafe staffing ratios, inadequate break time, or physical demands that exceed human capacity.
Organizations often frame burnout and pain as individual failings requiring personal resilience rather than systemic problems demanding institutional change. This puts the burden on already-struggling workers to somehow cope better with untenable conditions.
Effective intervention requires structural changes: adequate staffing, ergonomic equipment, protected break time, accessible mental health services without career consequences, and leadership that prioritizes worker wellbeing over productivity metrics.
When to Seek Professional Help
Don’t wait for crisis to pursue treatment. Consider evaluation if you experience:
Two or more warning signs persisting for several weeks. Isolated bad days happen. Patterns lasting weeks or months require assessment.
Pain interfering with basic daily activities. When showering, dressing, or preparing meals becomes difficult, comprehensive evaluation is warranted.
Increasing medication use without corresponding pain relief. This suggests tolerance or inadequate treatment approaches rather than effective management.
Thoughts about self-harm or suicide, even fleeting ones. These require same-day mental health evaluation regardless of other factors.
Feedback from trusted colleagues or family members expressing concern. Others often notice changes before we recognize them in ourselves.
The Invictus Clinic’s approach recognizes that chronic pain rarely exists in isolation from psychological distress. Dr. Grinage and Wesley Karcher spend as much time as necessary during initial consultations understanding not just your pain, but how it affects every aspect of your life. Their anesthesia expertise—combined with recognition of the pain-mental health connection—allows for treatment plans addressing the complete picture rather than isolated symptoms.
Understanding Your Treatment Options
Addressing chronic pain with mental health components requires comprehensive approaches.
No single treatment works for everyone, and results vary by individual. What provides relief for one person may not help another. This doesn’t reflect treatment failure—it reflects the complex, individual nature of chronic pain and mental health.
Evidence-based options include psychological interventions like cognitive-behavioral therapy specifically adapted for chronic pain, which helps modify thought patterns that amplify suffering. Physical approaches including physical therapy, occupational therapy, and appropriate exercise programs address biomechanical factors. Medication management might involve antidepressants, anti-anxiety medications, or specialized pain treatments.
Interventional treatments like nerve blocks, infusion therapies, or neuromodulation approaches target pain pathways directly. The most effective treatment plans typically combine multiple approaches rather than relying on a single intervention.
For healthcare workers, insurance coverage significantly affects treatment accessibility. The Invictus Clinic accepts Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, Aetna, and Medicare, with specific treatments like Spravato covered by insurance. They also offer a 25% discount on treatments for active military, veterans, and first responders—recognizing that those who serve others deserve accessible care.
Three Steps You Can Take This Week
Waiting for the “right time” to address pain and mental health concerns means suffering unnecessarily. Start now with these concrete actions:
Document your symptoms for three days. Note pain intensity, mood, sleep quality, and daily functioning using a simple 0-10 scale. This creates baseline data helpful for any provider you consult and helps you recognize patterns you might otherwise miss.
Identify one person you trust and share what you’re experiencing. Isolation amplifies both pain and psychological distress. Choose someone who listens without judgment—a partner, friend, colleague, or family member. You don’t need them to fix anything; you need them to witness your experience.
Research three providers or clinics in your area specializing in chronic pain. Don’t commit to appointments yet if that feels overwhelming. Simply gather information: services offered, insurance accepted, provider credentials, patient reviews. Knowledge reduces anxiety about taking the next step.
Finding Support in Marietta and Beyond
You don’t have to navigate chronic pain and mental health alone.
Local resources in the Marietta and greater Atlanta area include specialized pain management clinics, mental health professionals experienced in chronic illness, and support groups connecting individuals facing similar challenges. Many services now offer telehealth options, increasing accessibility for healthcare workers with demanding schedules.
The Invictus Clinic’s Marietta location at 1545 Powers Ferry Road provides consultations with Dr. Brandon Grinage, an anesthesiologist practicing in Northwest Georgia since 2012, or Wesley Karcher, CRNA, who has served the anesthesia community since 2007 and currently serves as President-Elect of the Georgia Association of Nurse Anesthetists. Their combined expertise specifically addresses the intersection of chronic pain and mental health.
Initial consultations involve comprehensive evaluation of both your pain history and how it affects your daily life, mood, and functioning. They recognize that healthcare workers face unique barriers to seeking care and work to create a treatment environment where admitting vulnerability feels safe rather than shameful.
If you’re experiencing thoughts of self-harm or suicide, immediately call 988 (Suicide and Crisis Lifeline) or go to your nearest emergency department. These thoughts represent a medical emergency requiring same-day intervention.
Moving Forward: Pain Doesn’t Have to Define Your Life
Living with chronic pain while maintaining mental health is possible, though the path looks different for everyone.
Recovery rarely means complete pain elimination. More often, it means reducing pain to manageable levels while rebuilding psychological resilience, reconnecting with activities that bring meaning, and developing sustainable coping strategies. This isn’t settling for less—it’s realistic about what “better” actually means.
Healthcare workers bring particular strengths to this journey. Your medical knowledge helps you understand treatment rationales. Your problem-solving skills aid in developing coping strategies. Your commitment to helping others can extend to helping yourself once you recognize that self-care isn’t selfish—it’s essential.
The warning signs outlined here aren’t meant to create anxiety but to empower recognition. Noticing these patterns in yourself or colleagues creates opportunity for intervention before crisis occurs. Early treatment consistently produces better outcomes than waiting until the situation becomes severe.
Your pain is real. Your exhaustion is valid. Your struggle with both physical and psychological symptoms doesn’t reflect weakness—it reflects normal human responses to extraordinary circumstances. Help exists, and it’s okay to need it.
References
Aaron, R. V., Kulnik, S. T., Fillingim, R. B., Hentz, J. G., Mathur, V. A., & Wegener, S. T. (2025). Prevalence of depression and anxiety among adults with chronic pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA Network Open, 8(3), e2453352. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2831134
Tang, N. K., & Crane, C. (2018). Chronic pain and suicide risk: A comprehensive review. General Hospital Psychiatry, 53, 58-68. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28847525/
U.S. Surgeon General. (2023). Addressing health worker burnout: The U.S. Surgeon General’s advisory on building a thriving health workforce. U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. https://www.hhs.gov/sites/default/files/health-worker-wellbeing-advisory.pdf
