Augmenting internet-delivered cognitive behaviour therapy (iCBT) with daily SMS prompts for adults with chronic pain: an open trial to examine efficacy and acceptability.

All participants will complete 5 lessons of an iCBT treatment, the Pain Course (Dear et al., 2013) focusing on the management of pain, anxiety, depression and disability. All 5 Lessons will be administered online (via the internet) and 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. The duration of the reminder emails and phone calls is expected to be 5-10 minutes per week. The duration of the program is 8 weeks. Study questionnaires will be administered at application, pre-treatment, post-treatment, and then 3, 12 and 24-months post-treatment. These questionnaires will take about 10 minutes to complete. Participants will be invited to receive generic SMS prompts and consenting participants will start receiving these prompts from week 3 of the course. The SMS prompts will be brief, limited to 1 a day on week days, and designed to remind participants to practice the skills during the day.