Painful Reality

New research focuses on the cause of concentration problems in people with chronic pain.

There were times when Hazel Godfrey’s chronic pain was so bad she considered abandoning her PhD, which was investigating why persistent pain makes it difficult for people to think. 

Godfrey has fibromyalgia, which causes muscle and joint pain along with draining fatigue. But she persevered for the sake of the many other people with chronic pain who took part in the time-consuming, one-on-one studies she conducted at Victoria University’s cognitive and affective neuroscience laboratory.

“My participants were so awesome,” says Godfrey, who will graduate with a PhD in psychology this month. “They helped me to keep going when it would have been really easy to stop because I felt really unwell. I had many people who went out of their way to participate in my studies. They were really supportive of the fact that I was doing research that might lead to more understanding of chronic pain.”