Psychosocial Treatment Techniques to Augment the Impact of Occupational Therapy Interventions for Chronic Low Back Pain among School Teachers

Abstract

Background: School teachers perform numerous tasks that contribute to low back pain and affect their activities of daily living, social and vocational abilities. Low back pain is multidimensional in nature constituting physical, psychological and social components. Psychosocial variables pose as an obstacle to rehabilitative recovery and have a role in development of chronicity, these factors are often neglected in the rehabilitation process, the present study integrates psychosocial factors with musculoskeletal factors and utilizes a rehabilitation program that focuses on overall recovery.

Objectives: This study aims to find effective treatment for psychosocial variables and examines the physical and psychosocial changes that occur in school teachers suffering with CLBP when they receive occupational therapy augmented with psychosocial intervention. The intervention targets anxiety, perceived stress, and self-efficacy.

Methodology: The study sample consisted of 60 school teachers, half of the sample was enrolled for occupational therapy intervention and other half for occupational therapy intervention augmented with psychosocial treatment techniques.

Results: At post-treatment participants in the occupational therapy augmented with psychosocial treatment group showed significant difference in measures of anxiety, perceived stress and self-efficacy, pain intensity, pain severity, pain disability and 5-minute walk test distance compared to participants who received occupational therapy treatment only. The two groups did not differ significantly in finger-to-floor test.

Conclusion: The findings of the study suggest that augmenting psychosocial variables is beneficial to person-environment factors of disability and result in better rehabilitation outcomes in terms of both psychosocial variables as well as pain related variables.