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Governments should measure pain when assessing societal wellbeing

Governments make efforts to measure citizens’ wellbeing, and the indicators are constantly evaluated. Evidence across the social and medical sciences shows that pain is a socioeconomic, psychosocial and behavioural phenomenon. Governments should incorporate the systematic measurement of pain into metrics of wellbeing.

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Fig. 1: Socioeconomic, psychosocial and behavioural aspects of pain.

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Correspondence to Lucía Macchia.

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Macchia, L. Governments should measure pain when assessing societal wellbeing. Nat Hum Behav 7, 303–305 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-023-01539-3

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