When psychologists first began developing interventions for chronic back pain sufferers, the goal was to help patients learn to live with their pain and still lead productive lives. But new evidence indicates that psychological intervention actually reduces pain for these patients.

In a review appearing in the January issue of Health Psychology lead author Robert Kerns, Phd.D. of the VA Connecticut Healthcare System details the benefits of psychological interventions in the treatment of patients with chronic back pain.

Although rehabilitation programs that include a psychological component can be more effective than costly surgical interventions, health insurers are less willing to pay for them.

“We need to specifically target health care system administrators and third-party payers to try to engage them in a more productive dialogue about the importance of these interventions,” Kerns said. “We continue to have a huge, very costly problem in our society, but we have an intervention that is effective, and we need to do a better job of creating access to these services.”