Multicomponent cognitive-behavioral group therapy with hypnosis for the treatment of fibromyalgia: long-term outcome

This study compared the efficacy of 2 psychological treatments for fibromyalgia with each other and with standard care. Ninety-three patients with fibromyalgia (FM) were randomly assigned to 1 of the 3 experimental conditions: 1) multicomponent cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT); 2) multicomponent CBT with hypnosis; and 3) pharmacological treatment (standard care control group). The outcome measures of pain intensity, catastrophizing, psychological distress, functionality, and sleep disturbances were assessed before treatment, immediately after treatment, and at 3- and 6-month follow-up visits. CBT and CBT with hypnosis participants received the standard pharmacological management plus 14 weekly, 120-minute-long sessions of psychological treatment. All but 1 session followed a group format; the remaining session was individual. The analyses indicated that: 1) patients with FM who received multicomponent CBT alone or multicomponent CBT with hypnosis showed greater improvements than patients who received only standard care; and 2) adding hypnosis enhanced the effectiveness of multicomponent CBT. This study presents new evidence about the efficacy of multicomponent CBT for FM and about the additional effects of hypnosis as a complement to CBT. The relevance and implications of the obtained results are discussed.

This article highlights the beneficial effects of adding hypnosis in a multicomponent cognitive-behavioral group treatment of fibromyalgia patients. Also, this research showed that by adding hypnosis the length of treatment did not increase.