Background: Although mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are widely used in clinical and nonclinical settings, there has been little systematic study of their potential risks. To address this gap, we examined differences in psychological and physical worsening among participants in the usual care and intervention conditions of a 3-group, randomized pragmatic trial (Learning to Apply Mindfulness to Pain [LAMP]) that tested the effectiveness of 2 approaches to delivering MBIs to patients with chronic pain.
Methods: The sample consisted of 374 male and 334 female patients with chronic pain enrolled in the LAMP trial who completed a 10-week follow-up survey, 61% of whom had a mental health diagnosis.
Importance: Although mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) are evidence-based treatments for chronic pain and comorbid conditions, implementing them at scale poses many challenges, such as the need for dedicated space and trained instructors.
Objective: To examine group and self-paced, scalable, telehealth MBIs, for veterans with chronic pain, compared to usual care.
Design, Setting, And Participants: This was a randomized clinical trial of veterans with moderate to severe chronic pain, recruited from 3 Veterans Affairs facilities from November 2020 to May 2022.
Mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) have been shown to improve chronic pain and associated conditions like depression, anxiety, and sleep disorders. However, there is limited research on how veterans with chronic pain apply mindfulness skills to manage pain in daily life. This cross-sectional study examined the association between applied mindfulness practice, pain, and several pain-related conditions among 1,737 veterans with chronic pain prior to enrollment in a trial of 2 MBIs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Recruitment for clinical trials and large-scale studies is challenging, especially for patients with complex conditions like chronic pain. Email recruitment has the potential to increase efficiency, to reduce costs, and to improve access for underrepresented patient populations. The objective of this study was to examine the effectiveness, efficiency, and equitability of email versus postal mail recruitment for the Learning to Apply Mindfulness to Pain (LAMP) study, a three-site clinical trial of mindfulness-based interventions for chronic pain.
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