European journal of pain : EJP
-
Generic self-management programs aim to facilitate behavioural adjustment and therefore have considerable potential for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain. Our main objective was to collect and synthesize all data on the effectiveness of generic self-management interventions for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain in terms of physical function, self-efficacy, pain intensity and physical activity. Our secondary objective was to describe the content of these interventions, by means of classification according to the Behaviour Change Technique Taxonomy. ⋯ All other comparisons did not indicate an effect. Classification of the behaviour change techniques showed large heterogeneity across studies. These results indicate that generic self-management interventions have a marginal benefit for patients with chronic musculoskeletal pain in the short-term for physical function and pain intensity and for self-efficacy in the long-term, and vary considerably with respect to intervention content.