New form of CBT may help with chronic pain management

An example of the advantages of focusing on recovery rather than focusing obsessively on a cure....
https://goo.gl/TAEcwE

According to the latest data from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), over 25 million Americans are currently living with chronic pain.

More and more studies have shown that cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) helps people cope with the condition. But, as some have pointed out, it is not entirely clear which aspects of the therapy are helpful for people with chronic pain, or how the treatment could be improved in order to achieve better results.

This is why a team of researchers from King's College London (KCL) in the United Kingdom set out to examine the benefits of a particular form of CBT - called "acceptance and commitment therapy" (ACT) - on the functioning and well-being of patients with chronic pain.

The first author of the new study is Lin Yu, of the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology, and Neuroscience at KCL, and the findings were published in the Journal of Pain.

ACT is a new form of CBT, which is currently used to treat a variety of psychological problems ranging from addiction to helping people cope with disabilities.

As Lance M. McCracken, professor of Behavioral Medicine at KCL and corresponding author on the new study explains, "[f]or pain management, ACT [...] focuses on building effective patterns of behavior change rather than symptom reduction."