Online, guided self-help Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Chronic Pain - calling participants for research

[PsyResNK]

Hi everyone

I’m Nathan, a Trainee Clinical psychologist, and lead researcher for a study on Chronic Pain. I would like to invite you to participate in our research. Below is an advert for the study with more information.

Please get in touch with any questions you may have.

Many thanks

Do you experience Chronic Pain?

Chronic Pain is any sort of pain that has lasted longer than 3 months.

If this is your experience then we'd like to invite you to take part in our research study

Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT – spoken as a word) is about as successful as any other psychological treatment for Chronic Pain and we want to see if we can improve it further. That’s why we are inviting you to participate in this study – to explore how an ACT-based self-help strategy might help you live a more valued and meaningful life.

For between 15 and 17 weeks you will be asked to complete some questionnaires and speak with the researcher over video call or the telephone about your experiences. The interesting bit is that you will take part in an online guided 8-week self-help based intervention.

This can be done from any internet enabled device such as a laptop, PC, tablet, or phone and will be done in accordance with UK Government social distancing regulations with weekly remote support and contact from the research team.

Afterwards you will have the chance to tell us exactly what you think.

Are you -

• Aged 18 and over and currently living in the UK.

• Able to provide informed consent.

• Computer literate with access to the internet and a valid email address.

• Able to read English sufficient for engaging with self-help materials and questionnaires

To get more detailed information, to register your interest, and to see if you are eligible please click the link below:

unioflincoln.eu.qualtrics.c...

This study contributes to research conducted on behalf of the University of Lincoln, UK, and has received a favourable ethical opinion from the University Human Ethics Committee (Ethics code: 2021_3886).

[MSTKing]

Using ACT to deal with so-called 'Chronic primary pain'...I could write an essay on this. Groan, groan, groan - will be enough for now.

[SurreyGal in reply to MSTKing]

I get you, but you have to surely believe this can help before you try it because that's part of it, if you don't believe it will help of course it won't. 😀

[MSTKing in reply to SurreyGal]

Placebo therapy!

[PsyResNK Researcher]

I am sorry to hear MSTKing that you have not found ACT helpful.

ACT is one approach of many for pain management and we do not know what the exact outcome of the study will be. But, this is why we think it is a topic worth researching.

Indeed, through our study we are hoping to contribute to our understanding of what treatments are effective for whom and in what circumstances. We also hope to identify ways of improving recommended psychological treatments like ACT.

As you’ve alluded to MSTKing, it is not possible for us to guarantee any direct benefit for participants; for example the self-help materials may not necessarily help. Nevertheless, participation will contribute to evidence for self-help interventions in chronic pain and may help advance our understanding.

[Hellytheelephant in reply to PsyResNK]

Hi Nathan, I just wanted to flag up the fact that so many of us will have had negative experiences with this kind of approach, that your study will feature a very self- selecting group, that will exclude so many living with pain for many years. I hope you will factor that into your results.

Good luck with your research, & best wishes.

[PsyResNK Researcher]

Hi Hellytheelephant. Self-selection bias is an important issue in research and thank you for raising the concern and for your well wishes for our research. I’m sorry to hear that you and/or others you know have had negative experiences.

Without getting into the ins and outs of the design, our study is primarily focused on processes of change and development of theory rather than trying to validate a specific theory or approach. If your predictions come true, this should be clear in participants’ starting point or 'baseline' which will perhaps be an interesting finding in itself and will, as you say, need considering.

Once again, thanks for engaging with this topic.

All the best.