The Pain Program: A Randomised Controlled Trial of an Internet Delivered Treatment Program for Managing Chronic Pain and Emotional Wellbeing

Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: 1) an immediate treatment group, or; 2) a delayed treatment group also known as a waitlist control group (beginnning the program 9 weeks after the immediate treatment group begin). All participants will meet diagnostic criteria for chronic pain (i.e. pain lasting longer than 3 months). All participants will complete 5 lessons of Internet based treatment about management of symptoms of chronic pain and anxiety, depression and disability associated with pain. One lesson will be completed every 7 to 10 days. Each lesson will take about 15 minutes to complete. Participants will also have access to summaries of each lesson, and will read anonymous stories about other people with chronic pain, taking a further 20 minutes per summary. All participants will also receive automatic email and weekly reminder phone calls by a clinical psychologist, and have access to a clinician-moderated online forum discussing content of the program. The duration of the reminder emails/phone calls and contribution to the forum is expected to be 5-10 minutes per week. The duration of the program is 8 weeks, but participants in the immediate treatment group will be contacted 3 months post program and asked to complete follow-up questionnaires. Study questionnaires will be administered at application, pre-education, post-education, and at 3-months post-education. These will take about 20-30 minutes to complete. The treatment materials are based on previous internet-based programs, which apply cognitive behavioural techniques.