Study shows pain reprocessing therapy can help reduce chronic back pain
Pain reprocessing therapy (PRT), which teaches people to perceive pain signals sent to the brain as less threatening, helps in the treatment of chronic pain, according to a new study.
The study, published in JAMA Network Open journal, examined the critical connection between the brain and pain for treating chronic pain and found that after PRT, patients reported reduced back pain intensity.
To study the effects of pain attributions, researchers enrolled over 150 adults experiencing moderately severe chronic back pain in a randomised trial to receive PRT and found two-thirds of people treated with PRT reported being pain-free or nearly so after treatment, compared to only 20 per cent of placebo controls.
According to the researchers, before PRT treatment, only 10 per cent of participants’ attributions of PRT treatment were mind or brain-related.
However, after PRT, this increased to 51 per cent, showing that the more participants shifted to viewing their pain as due to mind or brain processes, the greater the reduction in chronic back pain intensity.
“Often, discussions with patients focus on biomedical causes of pain. The role of the brain is rarely discussed. With this research, we want to provide patients as much relief as possible by exploring different treatments, including ones that address the brain drivers of chronic pain,” he added.
