Targeted Behavioral Pain Management May Improve Chronic Pain in Patients With Substance Use Disorder

Behavioral pain management techniques that focus on the interplay between chronic pain and the potential for substance abuse may improve pain tolerance and lower pain intensity in patients who have substance use disorder (SUD), suggests astudy inJAMA Psychiatry.Mark A. Ilgen, Ph.D., of the VA Center for Clinical Management Research in Ann Arbor, Mich., and colleagues compared pain tolerance and intensity of 470 adults over 12 months. All patients were in treatment for SUD and had chronic pain. Patients were randomized to receive either the Improving Pain During Addiction Treatment (ImPAT) intervention or supportive psychoeducation control in addition to treatment as usual for their SUD and chronic pain. ImPAT emphasizes the link between pain and poor functioning and the risk of using substances to cope with pain. Treatment using this approach focuses on conceptualizing and responding to pain with the goal of also preventing relapses to substance use. Although supportive psychoeducation also focuses on ways of responding to pain, it is less specific than ImPAT and does not emphasize ways to avoid misusing substances to cope with pain.Patients in both groups attended eight one-hour group sessions over four weeks. The researchers measured the patients ’ pain using the first item of the Numeric Rating Scale of Pain Intensity, which measures pain on a scale of 0 to 11. They also measured the patients’ pain tolerance using the ischemic pain task, which involves doing handgrip e...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: ImPAT JAMA Psychiatry Mark Ilgen pain pain intensity pain tolerance psychoeducation Source Type: research