The British journal of clinical psychology / the British Psychological Society
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Comparative Study
A controlled study of the effects of applied relaxation and applied relaxation plus operant procedures in the regulation of chronic pain.
Chronic back/joint pain patients participated in a comparative study of relaxation and operant therapies for chronic pain. Patients were randomly assigned to: (1) a waiting-list control, or to either (2) an applied relaxation, or (3) an applied relaxation plus operant conditioning treatment programme. Waiting patients were subsequently randomly assigned to active treatment. ⋯ Within-group and single-subject analyses indicated that there were significant improvements between pre- and post-tests for the treatment groups, but not for the waiting-list control group. Follow-up data indicated maintenance, and that applied relaxation had significantly lower pain ratings than applied relaxation plus operant conditioning. Taken as a whole, the results show that applied relaxation can produce significant decreases in pain, and that the addition of an operant programme does not improve pain reductions, but does tend to improve results with activity and especially medicine intake variables.