Mental health and physical pain are two things people often seek medical treatment. However, if you live in an area that doesn’t have accessibility to good treatment, this might just be the good news you need. According to a new study, apart from medicines and doctors, an online symptom self-management, that includes telecare could be just as beneficial as seeking treatment.
“Pain, anxiety, and depression can produce a vicious cycle in which the presence of one symptom if untreated may negatively affect the response to treatment of the other to symptoms,” said Dr. Kurt Kroenke, the study author.
“So treating not just pain but also mood symptoms simultaneously is quite important as doing it how when and where the patient is more receptive,” Kroenke added.
The research team of the study said they found that the intermediate mechanism of online pain and mood self-management is even more effective when coupled with live phone follow-up with a nurse.
“Our results strongly suggest that web-based self-management might be enough for some patients while others may require a combination of online self-management and phone consultations with a nurse manager to experience symptoms reduction.”
The study incorporated a total of 294 individuals with arm, leg, back, neck or widespread pain which persisted (for 10 or more years in more than half of CAMMPS participants) despite medication. These participants, who also had some moderately severe depression and anxiety, were divided into two groups.
One group received a web-based self-management programme comprised of nine modules (coping with pain; pain medications; communicating with providers; depression; anxiety; sleep; anger management; cognitive strategies; and problem-solving).
The other group, along with CAMMP was given telecare by a nurse who made scheduled telephone calls as well as contacts prompted by patient responses to the online self-management program or e-mail requests.
While those in the online self-management group indicated they wanted more human contact, participants in the group that received telecare from a nurse were divided with some wanting more contact, others desiring less contact.
