Mindfulness and its possible effects on the experience of chronic pain

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  Mindfulness and its possible effects on the experience of chronic pain

• IRAS ID

  219401

• Contact name

  Ruth Ogden

• Duration of Study in the UK

  1 years, 2 months, 7 days

• Research summary

  Pain, whether chronic or acute, impairs day to day functioning and well-being. In chronic pain populations, current treatments are often ineffective and psychological interventions are increasingly sought. Research is required to provide a better understanding of how pain is experienced psychologically and to test the efficacy of new treatment interventions. The proposed project will examine whether a brief mindfulness meditation intervention can shorten the perceived duration of pain in healthy people and chronic pain patients.

  People are imprecise on judging how long they are in pain for. Healthy adults, for example, estimate periods of pain to last for, on average, 35% longer than the actual duration (Ogden et al., 2014). This may be true to a greater extent in chronic pain populations because chronic pain affects cognitive processing, resulting in heightened attention to pain and greater body awareness (Eccelston et al., 1997). This project will therefore test whether there are differences in the way in which people with and without chronic pain experience the duration of periods of pain, thus providing a greater understanding of how pain is experienced psychologically.

  Mindfulness meditation has been shown to be effective in reducing chronic pain symptoms (Chiesa & Serretti, 2011) and improving the accuracy of duration judgments (Kramer, Weger & Sharma, 2013). This project will therefore examine whether a brief mindfulness training package can shorten the perceived duration of day to day pain and experimentally induced pain in chronic pain patients and a control group.

• REC name

  North West - Preston Research Ethics Committee

• REC reference

  17/NW/0444

• Date of REC Opinion

  24 Aug 2017

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion