Development and pilot testing of psychological pain management techniques for children with intellectual disabilities

The goal of this project is to adapt psychological pain treatment techniques that are now used with typical children in order to make them usable by children who have mild to moderate intellectual disabilities. This includes breathing, progressive muscle relaxation, behavioural relaxation training, imagery and biofeedback. The techniques are thought to help with pain by inducing relaxation of the body and mind that lessens pain. Psychological pain treatments that are now being used with typical children in hospitals and clinics in the English-speaking world will be collected. They will be contacted through pediatric pain organizations and associations. These will be reviewed and used to develop new versions that are adapted to make them easier for children with limited intellectual abilities to use to manage their pain. Manuals will be developed that can be used by staff nurses to teach the techniques to the children. Each treatment manual will be tested to learn if it is feasible and if it can help with pain by having a clinical psychologist and a nurse use it to train a small group of children with intellectual disabilities. At the end of the project, a larger study to test their effectiveness will be planned.