Evaluation of the Effectiveness of a Psychological Intervention for Fibromyalgia Supported by New Technologies

Different therapeutic options for psychological intervention in fibromyalgia are currently available. However, these interventions are usually of a general nature and do not take into account the differences between patients.

On the other hand, we know that these programs have greater or lesser effectiveness in improving quality of life and adaptation to pain, but there is not as much information available regarding the therapeutic mechanisms that are related to this effectiveness, i.e., What variables mediate the improvement in therapy? When do they produce the change? Is it possible to adapt the interventions to the results of the same that we can receive in real time? In the present work we propose to apply a psychological treatment already validated for fibromyalgia emphasizing those variables of beliefs and coping that research has shown to be directly related to belonging to the group of higher or lower functionality.

The objective will be to find out, on the one hand, if it is feasible to monitor the change in therapy using new technologies and, on the other hand, to measure this change to consider it when implementing the intervention, which is traditionally quite manualized when performed at group level and hardly considers individual differences in the response to treatment during treatment. Specifically, by means of a validated App we will measure those therapeutic variables that we expect to change as a result of introducing the treatment and, if not, a series of alarms will be generated that will alert the clinician of the absence of the expected change so that he can adapt the intervention according to the evolution of the patient in real time.