At the January meeting, Angie Kingma and Ted Robinson will give those in attendance the opportunity to learn all about their new program in MBCT (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy) for Chronic Pain. They will explore the background leading up to their two 2016 pilot programs, discuss the curriculum and its implementation, and present recent research data gathered from their pilot groups. They will also include some hands-on practice of both Mindfulness and CBT elements from the curriculum. Angie and Ted are looking forward to brainstorming with those who are there and receiving feedback that they can then use as they explore future directions for this new program.
Dr. Ted Robinson is a family physician, on staff at The Sinai Institute – both Bridgepoint and Mt Sinai Hospitals. He has worked with chronic pain patients for over 25 years, teaching them self-management strategies for coping with pain. He conducts group programs in cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) and mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) at the Wasser pain Management Center, Mt Sinai and Bridgepoint Hospital Ambulatory Care. In 2016 he co-led two pilot groups in MBCT for chronic pain. He has been practicing mindful meditation for over nine years. Dr. Robinson is a lecturer in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of Toronto.
Angie Kingma has been practicing mindfulness since 2006. She is an Occupational Therapist with specialties in psychotherapy and mindfulness. She has over 16 years of experience working in a variety of mental health and chronic pain settings (home care, hospitals, auto insurance and public sector). Angie’s private practice is called Mindfulness for Health and she is on faculty at the Centre for Mindfulness Studies. She runs several MBCT group programs per year for a variety of populations. Angie continues to work part-time at Trillium Health Partners, Credit Valley Hospital, in Ambulatory Mental Health Services. She founded Mindfulness Mondays for staff and co-founded the Mindfulness Halton/Peel Community. Angie received extensive professional Mindfulness Teacher training over the years through the University of California San Diego (UCSD); the Centre for Mindfulness Studies; Mark Coleman (Spirit Rock); and Mindful Self-Compassion Skills Training. She is also a certified MBCPM teacher (Mindfulness-Based Chronic Pain Management). Angie has a daily mindfulness practice and attends retreats regularly (True North Insight – Michele McDonald & Jesse Vega-Frey). Her personal meditation teacher/mentor is Beverly Yates (Theravada tradition).
Background Information for the new MBCT for Chronic Pain program
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has been taught to and practiced by hundreds, perhaps thousands of patients with chronic pain since it was first introduced at UMass Medical Center in 1979. Many studies have shown how effective Mindfulness can be in mitigating the impact that chronic pain has in the lives of those who suffer from it. Changes that many experience include improvement in mood (depression, anxiety, anger, guilt feelings), increased activity level, reduction in pain, and enhanced self-efficacy.
Over 20 years ago, a group of psychologists (Segal,Teasdale & Williams) were looking to develop a program for relapse prevention in patients with recurrent depression. They were all trained in Cognitive-behavioural Therapy (CBT); after meeting Jon Kabat-Zinn and exploring the MBSR program at UMass Medical Center, they developed a new program (Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy – MBCT) which incorporated elements of both MBSR and CBT. MBCT has been highly successful and has become the gold standard in UK for relapse prevention of recurrent depression. It has also been applied to other patient populations – notably for patients with anxiety, addiction disorders, diabetes and healthcare workers (to prevent burnout).
Since both MBSR and CBT are effective in helping chronic pain patients, we hypothesized that a hybrid program (MBCT for Chronic Pain) might also be effective in this population – and perhaps even more than either MBSR or CBT alone. We then developed a modified MBCT curriculum for chronic pain and introduced it with a pilot group at Wasser in spring 2016. A second pilot group was conducted at Bridgepoint Hospital in fall 2016.