One in three Europeans suffers from lower back and cervical pain
In 2019, over 70 people who suffer from or have experienced lower back or cervical pain took part in a UOC research project in order to learn new coping strategies by using psychosocial techniques via an app. As a result of this collaboration, the research team has managed to improve the apps and will launch a second study at the beginning of 2020. The experts are now looking for a new set of candidates interested in testing the mobile app finished. If you are interested in taking part in the study, are 18 or older, use a smartphone and have suffered from recurrent lower back and/or cervical pain in the last six months, write to ipd_cl_laboral@uoc.edu until 10th Marc. The team running the project will contact you with more information.
Managing lower back and cervical pain
According to the researchers, chronic pain is a very common form of discomfort, affecting around 25% of Europe's population, with lower back and cervical pain being among the most commonly reported. Experts have discovered that a third of the adult population has suffered from lower back pain at some point and more than 40% has, at one time or another, experienced cervical pain.
Led by Beatriz Sora, the team of UOC researchers from the eHealth Lab and the Faculty of Psychology and Education Sciences have developed two psychosocial treatment apps that may help alleviate chronic back pain and improve sufferers' quality of life. "The same discomfort might be managed differently by different people, which means there are always those who find it more difficult to cope", Sora pointed out, adding that "this kind of treatment is designed to train people to use strategies or techniques that will help them live more comfortably in spite of the discomfort they experience".
Psychosocial treatment: cognitive restructuring and distraction
The group of experts suggests that back pain is not only the result of physiological mechanisms. It is also conditioned by how we think and feel and how we interact with the people around us. The UOC researchers are thus working on developing two apps that will use techniques that have already been proven effective for treating this kind of discomfort: on the one hand, so-called cognitive restructuring, which means bearing in mind that how we think affects how we feel and how we deal with pain; on the other hand, distraction, based on the premise that we notice things less when we're not paying attention to them.
This project is co-funded by the European Union, via the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF), and by the Secretariat of Universities and Research of the Government of Catalonia's Ministry of Business and Knowledge, via the Knowledge Industry programme's Llavor (Seed) category for innovative projects that show potential in the productive sector.
