A randomized, controlled comparison of educational and behavioural interventions for women with fibromyalgia

We evaluated the effects of educational (EI) and behavioural interventions (BI) across a 10-week treatment period and at 6-month follow-up on various variables (e.g. coping with pain) for female patients with fibromyalgia (FM). The effects of EI and BI vs. the waiting-list control (WLC) group were also analysed. The EI did not lead to any significant changes. The BI led to benefits on the patients' use of pain coping strategies, functional disability, perceptions of pain and quality of sleep. With the exception of quality of sleep, these effects disappeared at follow-up. The WLC deteriorated in some of the Coping Strategies Questionnaire (CSQ) and the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ) subscales. The BI did somewhat better than the EI, in particular, but only the improvement in sleep-quality remained over time. We concluded that improvements were few after treatment and all, but one, disappeared at follow-up. Essentially, there were no differences between the three conditions in terms of effectiveness. More research is needed to clarify further the value of behaviourally oriented interventions for FM patients, particularly their value over time.