A Brief Report on the Evaluation of a Pain Self-Management Program for Older Adults

Chronic pain is often resistant to traditional medical management and other types of professional intervention. As such, several investigators have conducted studies of pain self-management programs. These self-management programs, however, were often led by therapists and shared much in common with traditional cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT); the efficacy of which, despite some inconsistencies, is largely supported in the literature. Although, like CBT, many therapist led programs involve a component of self-management in the form of “homework assignments,” it is important to evaluate the effectiveness of pain self-management, which is not therapist led. Within the context of controlled investigation, we evaluated a pain self-management program that involved use of a comprehensive self-help pain management book for older adults. Contrary to expectation, we did not identify any differences in the outcomes observed in the self-help patient group as compared to the control group (i.e., participants who did not receive the pain management book until after the study was completed) despite a great deal of satisfaction with the manualized program that was expressed by the participants. The implications of these findings are discussed.