Communicative Fractures in Chronic Pain: A Conceptual Model for Health Communication

Health Commun. 2026 Oct 15:1-16. doi: 10.1080/10410236.2026.2741907. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

Chronic pain is inherently subjective and must become communicable before it can be interpreted, socially recognized, and incorporated into clinical reasoning. Existing scholarship has examined pain expression, interpersonal responses, validation and invalidation, patient-clinician communication, family communication, and communicative disenfranchisement, but these phenomena have often been addressed within partly distinct research traditions. This conceptual article develops and delimits the pain communication fracture model (PCFM) through an integrative synthesis of pain science, health communication, illness narratives, interpersonal validation, communicative disenfranchisement, nocebo research, and pain education. The model distinguishes four analytical communicative registers-bodily experience, communicable expression, interpersonal interpretation, and clinical formulation-and three communicative fractures located in the transformations between them: CF1, expressibility; CF2, interpersonal legitimation; and CF3, clinical translation. The fractures are proposed as analytically distinguishable but potentially overlapping and dynamically interrelated processes, rather than as fixed stages, diagnostic categories, or established causal mechanisms. The PCFM links each fracture to preliminary indicators, plausible consequences, and potential mitigation strategies while accounting for patient agency, legitimate doubt, clinical judgment, and structural constraints. Its proposed contribution is integrative, architectural, and operational, rather than a claim to novelty for previously documented phenomena. The model remains unvalidated, and its value will depend on whether future research demonstrates that the three fractures are observable, sufficiently distinguishable, and useful for understanding chronic pain communication.

PMID:42876268 | DOI:10.1080/10410236.2026.2741907