Treating social pain at its source

The Social Pain Institute is a nonprofit translating the neuroscience of social pain — and the role of the endogenous opioid system — into clinical access and policy change.

Our focus is the conditions defined by persistent social and emotional pain that current medicine struggles to treat: borderline personality disorder, complex PTSD, chronic suicidality, and self-harm. Many of the people living with them are neurodivergent — including autistic people — and share one thread: connection that is painful, depleting, or out of reach. They deserve treatments aimed at the underlying mechanism, and the research to prove what works is overdue.