September 24, 2020

Episode 197 | Psychology for Chronic Pain: Does It Help? With Dr. Amanda C de C Williams

46 minutes

In this episode, we're discussing the different types of psychological therapies available for the treatment of chronic pain. Do they help? Are they safe? How much confidence can we place in them and what we should further investigate regarding this topic as we move forward? My expert guest this episode is Dr. Amanda Williams. Amanda was a full-time clinician in a pain management program for many years, then she transitioned to teaching and research. She's a professor of clinical health psychology at The University College London and a consultant clinical psychologist at the Pain Management Centre University College London Hospital in the United Kingdom. We discussed the findings from her paper called , which can be found in the August 2020 Cochrane Library of Systematic Reviews. The paper updates the literature regarding the effectiveness of different kinds of psychological therapy, including traditional cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, and behavioral therapy.

It also asks the question as to whether these interventions are safe and if we've investigated safety and harm enough in the literature. This paper was well-received by many, however, as with any study, there were some questions regarding the findings and how much emphasis we should place on psychological therapies versus other types of therapies to help people living with chronic pain. The paper also had some significant criticisms as to developing research base around acceptance and commitment therapy for chronic pain, a topic we've discussed many times on the show. It's important that as professionals and as general members of the public, we’re informed as to the argument and all sides of the literature, research, and perspectives with regard to the various treatments of psychological therapies for the treatment of chronic pain. We discuss all of this and more on this episode. Let's meet Dr. Amanda Williams.

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