Can back pain be eased using mind over matter?

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2021-09-30 01:00

International

Photo by Sasun Bughdaryan on Unsplash

For those with chronic back pain, psychological treatments aimed at changing beliefs about the causes of back pain and the amount of threat it poses could provide relief, according to international research. A month-long program including one telehealth session with a doctor and eight psychological treatment sessions was trialed on a group of 50 and compared with similar groups who either continued their usual treatment or were given a saline injection as a placebo. After the treatment, two-thirds of the group who underwent the psychological treatment were pain-free or nearly pain-free, compared to one-fifth of the placebo group and one-tenth of the usual treatment group. After a year, the researchers say the treatment group was still reporting less pain.

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Journal/
conference: JAMA Psychiatry

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: Weill Cornell Medical College, USA

Funder: This study was funded by National Institutes of Health grants R01 DA035484 (DrWager), R01 MH076136 (DrWager), National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences grant TL1-TR-002386 (Dr Ashar), Radiological Society of North America (Dr Flood), German Research Foundation grant GE 2774/1-1 (Dr Geuter), the Psychophysiologic Disorders Association, the Foundation for the Study of the Therapeutic Encounter, and community donations.

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