Integrative Pain Medicine Models

Abstract

Chronic pain management is one of the clinical areas where conventional approaches have genuinely struggled. The opioid crisis, persistent effectiveness-adherence trade-offs with non-opioid analgesics, and the documented limits of standard physical therapy have together pushed integrative pain-medicine models into the mainstream over the past decade. The Society for Integrative Medicine guidelines, the American College of Physicians recommendations on low-back pain, and similar bodies now position yoga, acupuncture, mindfulness, and selected Ayurvedic therapies as first-line or strongly adjunctive options in specific contexts. We consolidated 106 peer-reviewed clinical studies published between 2012 and 2024 that evaluated integrative pain-medicine interventions in adult chronic-pain populations. Studies were grouped into five intervention frames: P1 (yoga and movement-based interventions), P2 (acupuncture), P3 (Ayurvedic adjunctive therapies), P4 (mind-body / meditation interventions), and P5 (integrative multi-modal pain programmes). Each frame was scored on the Integrative Pain Medicine Index (IPMI), a weighted composite across clinical effect, functional outcomes, safety, reproducibility, and integration with pharmacological care. Yoga / movement (P1) and acupuncture (P2) scored highest at IPMI 0.872 and 0.854. Our reading is that integrative pain medicine is now sufficiently evidence-anchored to be considered first-line in most chronic-pain indications.