Episode 188 | Process-Based Therapy And Chronic Pain With Lance McCracken, PhD

As always, it's an honor to be spending this time with you. If you read episode 187, then you met psychologist, Louise Sharpe, who shared her research and discuss these central components of psychological therapy for effective pain management. Her research distilled over 50 components of psychological treatment for pain into three essentials, which were psychoeducation, cognitive approaches and strategies to increase physical activity. In her paper, she named these three as the gold standard for pain care. I enjoyed this episode with Professor Sharpe. I believe her research and interview is useful and can help inform clinical practice. Make sure to give it a read before you dive into this episode.

While I was doing some research, I came across a commentary in response to the paper Professor Sharpe published. This commentary was written by Professor Lance McCracken and published in the European Journal of Pain. For those of you who may not know Lance McCracken, he is a professor of clinical psychology and Head of Division of Clinical Psychology at Uppsala University in Sweden. He has worked as a clinician and conducted research into chronic pain treatment for more than 30 years. He actively contributes to the evidence base on Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for chronic pain.

The title of his commentary was Necessary Components of Psychological Treatment for Chronic Pain: More Packages for Groups or Process-Based Therapy for Individuals. In his commentary, Professor McCracken proposes that instead of studying the components of psychological treatment, if we want better treatments for pain, what we mainly need to identify is the processes of change known to have an impact on outcomes. I was interested in Lance's commentary and his perspective, so I invited him to come to speak to us. This leads us to the episode where Professor McCracken discusses Process-Based Therapy.

Process-Based approaches have been growing. Some say that Process-Based Therapy should be the new gold standard of care because they can target a broader range of problems. In diagnosis-based protocols can target multiple problems at once and a more easily individualized and minister to the client. In this episode, you'll learn all about Process-Based Therapy, the science and evidence behind Process-Based Therapy, how it can help clinicians more effectively treat pain, and how it differs from protocols that focus on specific syndromes. Without further ado, let me introduce Professor Lance McCracken, and learn all about Process-Based Therapy.

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