Is adherence to pain self-management strategies associated with improved pain, depression and disability in those with disabling chronic pain?

Item does not contain fulltextThere is generally good evidence that pain management interventions that include self-management strategies can substantially reduce disability and improve psychological well-being in patients with chronic pain. Reductions in unhelpful responses, especially catastrophising and fear-avoidance beliefs, have been established as key contributors to these gains. In contrast, there is surprisingly little evidence that adherence to self-management strategies contributes to achieving these outcomes. Difficulties in defining and measuring the use of pain self-management strategies have been obstacles for this research. Using a pragmatic way of assessing the practice of specific strategies this study investigated their ability to account for changes in pain, disability and depressive symptoms after a 3-week cognitive-behavioural pain management program. The post-treatment outcomes on these dimensions were found to be statistically and, for many, clinically significant. Consistent with previous research, reductions in catastrophising and fear-avoidance beliefs, and increased pain self-efficacy beliefs, were also associated with these gains. But the key new finding was that there was a clear gradient between adherence to specific self-management strategies and reductions in pain, disability and depressive symptoms. Furthermore, adherence to the self-management strategies was predictive of better outcomes even after controlling for the moderating effects of initial catastrophising, fear-avoidance and pain self-efficacy beliefs