On the McGill Pain Index ...can someone find FIBROMYALGIA?

Answer 1

Melzack, who developed the McGill Pain Index, felt that by catagorizing the descriptions of pain, you could generalize which conditions had which amounts of pain. This was then used to show that a certain condition is worse than another based on the results on this index.

However, as a person's perception of pain is individual, there may be an ability to generalize large groups of people into a certain level of pain, but there can be significant differences in the amount of pain perceived by two people with the same condition.

It would be, in my opinion, impossible for anyone to say how much pain any one person is perceiving from any condition. The generalizations found by using the McGill Pain Index may provide some guide point as to the type to treatment which would be expected to control the pain of a person with a particular condition, but it cannot in any way provide any guidance in the treatment of an individual. From that standpoint the McGill Pain Index has little value, unless used on an individual basis. In that case each case of fibromyalgia would rate differently on the index.