What could be more localized than an individual person experiencing physical pain? In truth, the experience of pain is immensely complex with psychological, social, and cultural factors in addition to physiological factors. Leonard van Gelder and his Institute for Contextual Health are at the forefront of science-based holistic pain management from an evolutionary and complex systems perspective. The approach that he is pioneering for pain management can also be applied to a wider range of health and societal problems.
Here is a list of academic publications supporting the holistic approach.
Sundström, Felicia TA, et al. "Are people with chronic pain more diverse than we think? An investigation of ergodicity." Pain (2022): 10-1097.
Sanabria-Mazo, Juan P., et al. "Relationship between outcomes and processes in patients with chronic low back pain plus depressive symptoms: idiographic analyses within a randomized controlled trial." Psychotherapy Research 35.6 (2025): 1001-1016.
Sahdra, Baljinder K., et al. "Testing the applicability of idionomic statistics in longitudinal studies: The example of ‘doing what matters’." Journal of Contextual Behavioral Science 32 (2024): 100728.
O’Sullivan, Peter B., et al. "Cognitive functional therapy: an integrated behavioral approach for the targeted management of disabling low back pain." Physical therapy 98.5 (2018): 408-423.
