As many as one in five Americans suffer from chronic pain, an often intractable problem that costs the country more than $600 billion in treatments and lost work-time and has helped fuel a deadly opioid epidemic.

But new CU Boulder research, published today in the journal JAMA Psychiatry Original Investigation, provides some of the strongest evidence yet that a non-drug, psychological treatment can provide potent and durable relief.

This study suggests a fundamentally new way to think about both the causes of chronic back pain for many people and the tools that are available to treat that pain. – Sona Dimidjian, Director Renee Crown Wellness Institute

The study found that two-thirds of chronic back pain patients who underwent a four-week psychological treatment called Pain Reprocessing Therapy (PRT) were pain-free or nearly pain-free post-treatment. And most maintained relief for one year. They also showed changes in pain-generating brain regions after therapy.

Release date: 29 September 2021
Source: University of Colorado at Boulder

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