Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a condition in which the pancreas is consistently inflamed, resulting in pain, malabsorption of nutrients, and irreversible organ damage. CP-related pain can be severe and is associated with decreased quality of life and impaired psychosocial functioning. Treatment options for CP, particularly for pain management, are extremely limited in both scope and efficacy. It is imperative that additional pain therapies be made available to the CP population. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is a non-pharmacological treatment that has shown benefits in helping people cope with painful conditions. This study aimed to 1) adapt an established online CBT program (The Pain Course) for people with CP pain, 2) assess feasibility and acceptability of the program, and 3) conduct a pilot randomized controlled trial to determine preliminary efficacy of the program. We first adapted The Pain Course through careful review of the existing five lessons and case stories to insert information about CP and its symptoms to increase the relevancy of the program for CP patients. In the second phase of the project, 10 CP patients will receive access to the modified online course (The Pancreatitis Pain Course) and will complete the intervention to learn cognitive-behavioral pain coping skills. Patients will provide qualitative feedback regarding their experience and the acceptability of the intervention through interviews, and the course will be modified further. In the final phase, 30 patients will be randomized (15 patients will receive CBT and 15 will receive waitlist control condition). Outcome data on pain, psychological functioning, and quality of life will be obtained at baseline, 8 weeks, and at three-month follow up to assess treatment efficacy. Ultimately the goal is to develop a safe, economical treatment option for those who suffer from CP pain that will alter and expand current clinical practice of CP pain management.  

The ability to regulate emotion does not develop completely until young adulthood, meaning teenagers are at risk for disorders associated with difficulties in regulating emotions. Identifying one’s emotions is essential for taking active steps towards regulating them; thus emotion differentiation is an essential skill that facilitates psychological well being. Although there have been multiple questionnaires developed to assess emotion differentiation, there are limitations of self-report. Behavioral tasks provide an opportunity to observe an individual’s ability to identify emotions. The Photo Emotion Differentiation (PED) task is a computer task designed to assess emotional differentiation, validated predominantly in adult populations. Participants are shown 20 standardized emotional images and are asked to report the intensity with which they experience each of the 19 listed emotions. The limitation to this method is that it has only been used once in child populations. We aim to validate the PED for use in adolescents by comparing it to a self-report questionnaire [the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale for Children (LEAS-C)] that assesses emotion differentiation. The instructions for the LEAS-C ask youth to respond to 12 scenarios by indicating how they might feel and how the other person in the scenario might feel. A validated scoring system is used applying specific criteria to the emotion words used in the response. This is an ongoing study and we have currently recruited 14 participants from ages 13 to 16 who will come for a lab visit and complete both the PED and the LEAS-C. A positive correlation between the scores from the PED and LEAS-C will show that the PED is measuring the construct of emotion differentiation and can be used to obtain valid assessment in youth in subsequent studies. With this information, the PED can be used to examine the relationship between pain and emotion differentiation in adolescents.

Chronic pain is a perplexing and complex disease that may inflict physical disability or psychological impairment on individuals due to a medical illness or intervention, acute injury, or in the absence of physical illness or injury. Yet while chronic pain affects individuals across all age ranges, certain groups are disproportionately represented in chronic pain research. In particular, limited chronic pain research has focused on adolescents and young adults (AYAs) roughly between the ages of 16 and 25, leaving unanswered questions about how and when AYAs with chronic pain achieve developmental milestones such as gaining employment, forming romantic relationships, and living independently. The focus of this project is to investigate the effects of chronic pain on AYAs and aims to answer the following research questions: (1) Does the age of onset of chronic pain influence how AYAs achieve developmental milestones, (2) What developmental milestones are achieved by AYAs with chronic pain and how do they compare to controls who experience no chronic pain, and (3) Are commonly applied psychological measures ascertaining the most important information from AYAs? To answer these questions we performed a secondary data analysis of a data set of AYAs reporting to a tertiary pain center in the United Kingdom. This data set is courtesy of Dr. Hannah Twiddy of the University of Liverpool. Our analysis includes questionnaire data in the form of validated measures for impacts of pain on lifestyle, disability, depression, and self-esteem among others.  Results of this study describe the developmental milestones achieved by AYAs suffering from chronic pain and will help psychologists understand the nature of chronic pain in AYAs, and potentially develop more effective treatment plans in the future.