Do you think there is an objective pain scale?

[noname223]

I have asked myself this lately. It is said that some kind of nerve pain is the worst a person can experience. I think it is for example this suicide disease. Some people on here had or have it. Moreover tooth pain is considered as very severe.
I had psychosomatic pain due to bipolar in the past. It lasted for almost 3 years. It was unbelievable painful. I was so agitated.
Seemingly they use pain scales for chronic pain patients. Maybe some on here can tell more about it.

An Objective Pain Score for Chronic Pain Clinic Patients

Although numerous studies have looked at the numeric rating scale (NRS) in chronic pain patients and several studies have evaluated objective pain scales, no known studies have assessed an objective pain scale for use in the evaluation of adult chronic ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Here a quote: "Pain self-report continues to be considered the gold standard of pain assessment [1]. A number of self-reporting pain assessment tools have been designed and validated in patients with chronic pain, including the most commonly used numeric rating scale (NRS), the verbal rating scale (VRS), and the visual analog scale (VAS) [2–6]. These scales require patients to place a quantitative rating on their pain sensation and convert a subjective feeling into a quantitative number for pain measurement and long-term evaluation over time. While these scales may place an appropriate emphasis on the patient, unfortunately, they allow for bias and lack of objectivity due to the data being completely patient-reported."

For kids they have another tool to measure it. https://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/Article?contentid=2994&language=English
One behavioural tool to assess pain is the FLACC scale, for children aged two to seven. It assesses a child's pain based on their facial expression, leg and arm movements, extent of crying and ability to be consoled.

For kids it rather seemed to be this objective scale which I have imagined. However I am quite sure this does not count for mental illnesses.

It would be quite interesting if you could analyze a brain with a computer and show what the pain level is. But I think our technology is far away of reaching that.

Here I add a quote from an American author "How odd I can have all this inside me and to you it's just words." Maybe that is part of this existential loneliness.

Would it comfort you if a data analysis could prove your level of pain. Many mentally ill people who experience pain are questioned if they are not simulating it. But I think other people like chronic pain patients or CFS patients have similar experiences. Especially if the pain is "invisible".

 

[Rational man]

Thats interesting. Drs have always always asked me what my pain level is on a scale of 1 to 10 and ive never known how to answer. Physical and mental pain has become normalised for me. I wouldn't recognise me if i.didnt have it. One dr said to me that i would know my threshold when i roll around the floor in agony. !

Here a quote: "Pain self-report continues to be considered

ive tried reading it but its very academic. People are not statistics or meta analysis studies. We are individuals who face pain on a multifaceted level. Many drs would understand the effects of pain better if they went through it too. But im kinda cynical about some of their responses.

 

[settheory]

I am pretty sure there is. The measurement methods you mentioned are practical, but arbitrary from a theoretical point of view. There are much more general ones than the ones you mentioned, but somewhat more abstract and difficult to practically implement. Measuring things with money and probability, for example.

Vickrey–Clarke–Groves mechanism - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(^ intended as a theoretical optimal decision making mechanism under some circumstances rather than for measurement for utility, but can be used for that)

Hay voting - electowiki

Hay voting is a single-seat nondeterministic cardinal voting system designed by Peter de Blanc. Its characteristic feature is that if the voters use optimal strategy, then it's possible to infer their utility functions (how much utility they judge they will get if a candidate wins), up to an...

electowiki.org

Just to name a few. We can use them to measure pain, with being releived of this or that pain as a kind of (relatively) positive utility. I call those methods "more general" because they are related not to some features humans possess, but to the essence of pain itself. And the essence of pain is a preference toward not feeling it, or at least not for the sake of pain itself, and preference for the lesser amount of pain. Those methods are based on measurement of preference.
Those methods are used to measure intrapersonal utility, but i am sure there are some empirical methods of measurement even interpersonal utility, probably using intrapersonal methods and empirical methods (induction, statistics and such).
How practically measurable it is a different question. But the fact that it is theoretically measurable means there is, and it, and it kind of satiasfies me.
Edit: one popular intrapersonal, somewhat primitive, but somewhat "universal" method is to just ask someone to rate their pain on a scale. Already mentioned here. It is universal, because, as i mentioned, it is based on preference, something that all those who feel pain have, as pain is a form of preference. And this method usually incentivises to report their pain relatively correctly, because success of their treatment might be influenced by that.