Relaxation and guided imagery appears to improve symptoms in Hispanic persons diagnosed with fibromyalgia - GreenMedInfo Summary
Relaxation and guided imagery in Hispanic persons diagnosed with fibromyalgia: a pilot study.
Fam Community Health. 2008 Jul-Sep;31(3):204-12. PMID: 18552601
School of Nursing, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA 23298, USA. [email protected]
Fibromyalgia (FM) is a chronic pain disorder affecting 2% of the population in the United States. Another 16 million Hispanics suffer from generically identified rheumatic diseases that likely include FM. Because there are few reported studies of Hispanics with FM, a pilot study using a repeated-measures pretest-posttest design investigated the effects of a 10-week mind-body intervention (visual imagery with relaxation) on symptom management. The change in means from baseline to week 10 demonstrated improvement in self-efficacy for managing pain and other symptoms and functional status. Visual imagery with relaxation is a mind-body intervention that may be used for symptom management in this population.