A stress management programme for Crohn’s disease

Effect of psychological therapy on disease activity, psychological comorbidity, and quality of life in inflammatory bowel disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…These included a lack of randomisation, 43,44 recruitment of patients with both active and quiescent disease, with no reporting of data separately for these distinct groups of patients, 45 being conducted in an adolescent population, 46 redundant publication, 47 or providing no extractable data. 48 In addition, we made every effort to contact the authors of potentially eligible studies, where dichotomous or continuous data of interest were not available in the published manuscript. We used an intention-to-treat analysis, with all patients lost to follow-up assumed to be treatment failures, for dichotomous endpoints such as remission or relapse of disease activity, in order to avoid overestimation of the effect of the active intervention.…”

"Role of Psychosocial Factors on the Course of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and Associated Psychotherapeutic Approaches. A Fresh Perspective and Review"

“…Even IBD patients in the self-directed stress management, where they used a written guide on stress management procedures without a therapist, showed a significant reduction in tiredness and abdominal pain, post treatment and at 12 month follow up [55]. The conventional medical control group did not show any significant changes.…”

“…[44,58]. Many of the above studies have found long lasting effects from brief therapeutic interventions which may contribute to reduced health care utilization and costs and decreased productivity loss in managing IBD, for example reduction of outpatient attendances, sick-leave and hospital days [6,20,31,47,51,55,58]. Yet, some have found only a short term benefit with a diminished positive effect of therapy over time [57,60].…”

“…A group of 15 IBD patients who underwent 8 individual session with a psychologist focusing on techniques to reduce stress and tension and improve coping skills, progressive muscular relaxation, relaxation practice, self-instruction and problem solving, showed significantly reduced tiredness, constipation, abdominal pain, distended abdomen both post treatment and at 12-month follow up [55]. Even IBD patients in the self-directed stress management, where they used a written guide on stress management procedures without a therapist, showed a significant reduction in tiredness and abdominal pain, post treatment and at 12 month follow up [55].…”

Social learning contributions to the etiology and treatment of functional abdominal pain and inflammatory bowel disease in children and adults

“…Self-reports of stress and disease activity dropped for the treatment group, but not the control group. Garcia-Vega and Fernandez-Rodriguez [75] assigned a total of 45 patients to one of two stress management groups (therapist or self-directed) or usual medical care. Patients in both self-management groups showed reductions in some gastrointestinal symptoms and tiredness, while the conventional medical group did not.…”