Internet-based Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Chronic Pain (ALGEApp)
Chronic Pain
About this trial
This is an interventional treatment trial for Chronic Pain focused on measuring ACT, digital intervention, web-based, adherence
Eligibility Criteria
Inclusion Criteria:
- Age 18 years or older
- At least 3 months chronic pain duration,
- At least a pain intensity score of ≥ 4 prior to the intervention (assessed by an 11 point numeric rating scale (NRS; Dworkin et al., 2005) ranging from (0) 'no pain' to (10) 'pain as bad as the participant can imagine'.
- Users to have undergone medical assessment within one year,
- Official medical diagnosis on the type of chronic pain that users suffer from,
- Regular access to a computer/tablet and internet
- Sufficient knowledge of the Greek language.
Exclusion Criteria:
- Comorbidity with a serious medical condition other than chronic non-malignant pain (e.g., complete paraplegia or tetraplegia, heart or vascular diseases, malignant pain such as cancer etc.), which may interfere with participation. A neurologist will be consulted and candidates will be excluded if their medical condition is regarded as significantly interfering with their participation.
- Recent episodes of active psychosis, manic episodes, substance use disorder and suicidal ideation. Assessment will take place using selected single items from mini-SCID (mini - Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders Karekla & Panayiotou 2010). Candidates who respond positively to one or more of the assessed mini-SCID items will be excluded from further participation and will receive information over the phone with advice to seek help, along with relevant information on available services from their local community mental health services or their general practitioner.
Sites / Locations
Arms of the Study
Arm 1
Arm 2
Experimental
Active Comparator
The ALGEapp (Brief i-ACT intervention)
Active Control group
The intervention builds on a previously unpublished face-to-face protocol for greek-speaking chronic pain sufferers (developed by Karekla & Vasiliou, 2013) and has been simplified and modified to produce a self-help digital internet-based modality, namely the ALGEApp. ALGEApp consists of a total of 4 approximately one-hour sessions, which are structured to be completed by the users in sequence within a time frame of 2-8 weeks (depending on the rate of completion by each user). The intervention is guided, which implies that an animated character (an Avatar) guides the user throughout the whole duration of the intervention. ALGEApp contains experiential and audiovisual psycho-educational material based on ACT, adopted for the Greek-Cypriot culture.
The Active control group will have access only to limited component of the ALGEApp intervention, namely the Bonus section, which contains limited psycho-educational information regarding pain management.