Chronic pain is a frequent and debilitating comorbidity of SCI (Ravenscroft et al., 2000). Although exercise is an effective strategy for managing pain in other chronic pain populations (e.g., Ettinger et al., 1997), exercise training has not been previously examined in the SCI population. In a RCT of 34 sedentary men and women with traumatic SCI, the effects of exercise on perceived pain and physical and psychological well-being were examined. Additionally, the efficacy of exercise as a pain management strategy was assessed. Exercisers performed aerobic and resistance training twice weekly over 9-months. Controls maintained their usual level of activity. Measures of pain (Ware & Sherbourne, 1992), physical well-being (Reboussin et al., 2000), stress (Cohen et al., 1992), depression (Radlof, 1977) and subjective well-being (Cantril 1965; Patrick et al., 1988) were administered at baseline and at the 3, 6 and 9 months points of the intervention. A series of ANCOV As adjusted for baseline scores revealed a significant group main effect for the measures of pain, stress, depression and subjective well-being which reflected improvement in all of these domains for the exercisers (i.e., decreased pain, stress and depression and increased subjective well-being) and decrement in all of these domains for the controls (ps<.05). Hierarchical linear regression analyses (cf. Baron & Kenny, 1986) revealed that change in physical well-being partially mediated change in pain, change in pain mediated change in stress and subjective well-being and change in stress mediated change in depression. These findings suggest that variables mediating exercise-induced change should be targeted to maximize the effectiveness of exercise as a pain management strategy for individuals with SCI. The therapeutic and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. / Thesis / Master of Science (MS)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/24528 |
| Date | 09 1900 |
| Creators | Latimer, Amy |
| Contributors | Martin, K. A., Human Biodynamics |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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