Evaluation of a psychological treatment for inflammatory bowel disease

Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) encompasses two related gastrointestinal-tract diseases, ulcerative colitis (UC) and Crohn's Disease (CD). This study, a randomized controlled trial, compared the effectiveness of a multi-component behavioral treatment package (n = 11), which included IBD education, progressive muscle relaxation, thermal biofeedback, and training in use of cognitive coping strategies, to the effectiveness of symptom-monitoring (n = 10) as a control condition; 8 controls subsequently completed treatment. At posttreatment, the treatment group showed mean reductions on 5 symptoms, while the symptom monitoring controls showed mean reductions on all 8 symptoms. On a measure of Total Symptomatic change, the controls showed more improvement than the treated group; the treated controls at posttreatment, showed increases on all 8 symptoms. However, treated subjects perceived themselves as coping better with IBD, as feeling less IBD-related stress, and as experiencing less depression and anxiety. It is hypothesized that inherent differences may have existed between CD and UC subjects which could have led to the differences seen in treatment responses.