Literacy-Adapted Psychosocial Treatments for Chronic Pain --- "Learning About Mastering/My Pain"

Brief summary (from the registry)

Chronic pain is a significant public health problem that affects over 116 million Americans, costs $600 billion annually, and is unequally borne by people in low-income brackets, especially ethnic minorities. Many individuals also have health literacy deficits (difficulty understanding their illness and difficulty navigating the health care system for treatment) putting them at a greater disadvantage. Treatment usually relies on expensive medical interventions that often have negative side-effects. Psychosocial treatments, like Pain Education and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), show promise, but are usually unavailable. Clinicians are poorly equipped to provide psychosocial treatments to patients with low health literacy. CBT has not been adapted and supported for use in individuals with low health literacy, and even educational materials are often poorly adapted for their needs. To address this problem, the PI completed a small trial showing benefits from health literacy-adapted pain education and CBT groups for chronic pain in a population with low income and low health literacy. Patients in both treatments reported lower pain by the end of treatment, and the effects were maintained at one year. Patients in the CBT group also reported less depression. The current study uses a larger sample, and directly compares these psychosocial treatments to medical treatment-as-usual to seek better evidence for or against their widespread use in community settings. Our research questions: 1. In people with chronic pain and low income and/or low literacy, does participating in a health-literacy-adapted psychosocial treatment improve their pain and interference in daily activities due to pain by the end of treatment when compared with a group receiving typical medical care, and are these effects maintained 6 months later? 2. Does participation in the CBT pain management group improve symptoms of depression better than a pain education group by the end of treatment, and are t…

Study details

Official title

Reducing Disparities With Literacy-Adapted Psychosocial Treatments for Chronic Pain: A Comparative Trial

Conditions

• Chronic Pain
• Pain
• Widespread Chronic Pain
• Chronic Pain Syndrome
• Chronic Pain Due to Injury

Interventions

• Behavioral: Pain Ed
• Behavioral: CBT for Pain
• Other: Usual Care

Sponsor

University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa

Collaborators

Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute; Whatley Health Services; East Carolina University

Start date

2013-09-12

Primary completion

2016-02

Sex

All

Age range

from 19 Years

Results posted

Yes, on ClinicalTrials.gov

Countries

United States

Total sites listed

3

Eligibility criteria