Applying a Lifespan Developmental Perspective to Chronic Pain: Pediatrics to Geriatrics

• An ideal taxonomy of chronic pain would be applicable to people of all ages.
• A lifespan developmental approach might unify pediatric, adult, and geriatric pain.
• Childhood is a period of rapid neural proliferation, integration, and plasticity.
• Homeostenosis restricts older persons' responses to pain and stress.
• Foci of a pain taxonomy should be individuals in pain, not pain in individuals.

An ideal taxonomy of chronic pain would be applicable to people of all ages. Developmental sciences focus on lifespan developmental approaches, and view the trajectory of processes in the life course from birth to death. In this article we provide a review of lifespan developmental models, describe normal developmental processes that affect pain processing, and identify deviations from those processes that lead to stable individual differences of clinical interest, specifically the development of chronic pain syndromes. The goals of this review were 1) to unify what are currently separate purviews of “pediatric pain,” “adult pain,” and “geriatric pain,” and 2) to generate models so that specific elements of the chronic pain taxonomy might include important developmental considerations.PerspectiveA lifespan developmental model is applied to the forthcoming Analgesic, Anesthetic, and Addiction Clinical Trial Translations, Innovations, Opportunities, and Networks—American Pain Society Pain Taxonomy to ascertain the degree to which general “adult” descriptions apply to pediatric and geriatric populations, or if age- or development-related considerations need to be invoked.