Effects of pain beliefs on treatment outcomes in chronic pain patients
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Understanding and improving the stratification of psychological interventions for chronic pain patients
IRAS ID
287411
Contact name
Emma Borg
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University of Reading
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 5 months, 1 days
Research summary
Chronic pain (defined by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence as pain that lasts longer than three months) can be debilitating for sufferers and difficult for clinicians to treat. It is a common condition which carries significant social and economic costs.
We propose to run a pilot study addressing the following question: Do chronic pain patients' beliefs about the nature of pain affect their engagement and success with psychological treatments?
The research is co-funded by the University of Reading and the Royal Berkshire Hospital NHS Foundation Trust. The study will be conducted with chronic pain patients who are offered a course of psychological treatment as part of a Pain Management Programme at the Royal Berkshire Hospital's Pain Management Unit, or at Finchampstead Surgery's Integrated Pain and Spinal Service.
Participants will be recruited over a period of six months (up to a ceiling of 200 participants). We will investigate their beliefs about pain and any effects of these beliefs on treatment outcomes. Our previous research has shown that people sometimes think of pain as being located in a body part, and sometimes as being a mental state or feeling. Our pilot study will explore whether these different ways of thinking (assessed with a pre-treatment questionnaire) affect outcomes from psychological treatment (assessed using post-treatment questionnaires).
In the future, depending on the results of this pilot study, we hope to investigate whether treatment outcomes could be improved by encouraging patients to think about pain in a more mentalistic, less bodily, way. We will apply for ethical clearance for that research at a later date, assuming that the pilot study confirms that patients' beliefs about pain do affect their outcomes from psychological treatment.
REC name
London - Harrow Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
20/PR/0486
Date of REC Opinion
2 Dec 2020
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion