Papers of the Week

Aversive childhood stress and its implications für expert reports using the example of chronic pain Insurance-medical questions regarding the consequences of severe aversive childhood stress arise in the context of psychiatric and psychosomatic expert reports. In psychiatric expert reports, the insurance-medical weighting of disorders of thinking, feeling and behaviour is in the foreground. In psychosomatic expert reports the assessment of limited performance with regard to functional body symptoms are considered to be most important. The majority of expert reports in the psychosomatic field concern people with chronic pain disorders. Pain disorders can develop insidiously over the years or be triggered by accidents. For expert reports of chronic pain conditions, guidelines have been developed by the corresponding specialist bodies in Switzerland. These have been available in German and French since 2019 (www.sappm.ch). The following overview focuses on expert reports of chronic pain disorders and is based on the Swiss guidelines mentioned above. The demanding nature of writing such expert reports is also recognized by specialists in other European countries.