As a Hospice nurse I can tell you for a fact the the mind and the body do affect each other! It is unreal how much helping a person deal with the "mental" pain can help with dealing with the "physical" pain. I have also noted if you try to fight the pain physically, ie tense up, grit teeth etc the natural things we all seem to do so we wont be "weak" contribute to this also.
BTW my biggest pet peeve is those who state to others "it is all in their head", well it may be but they need help for that too!!!
sorry