Restoring Emotional, Sexual, and Physical Empowerment Through CBT & Trauma-sensitive Care: A Chronic Pelvic Pain Intervention

This project will develop and preliminarily examine RESPECT, a trauma-sensitive psychological and physical therapy intervention to treat chronic pelvic pain, posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTS), and dysfunctional sexual behavior among women with sexual abuse histories. Chronic pelvic pain disorders are highly prevalent in the U.S., affecting between 10-21% of premenopausal women at some time in their lives. Chronic pelvic pain is associated with dyspareunia, depression, anxiety, relationship distress, functional impairment and poor quality of life. History of sexual abuse is associated with development of chronic pelvic pain and with the severity of psychological distress and functional impairment among chronic pain patients.

Unfortunately, frontline chronic pelvic pain treatments such as physical therapy and pain-specific psychological interventions fail to address sexual trauma. Standard physical therapy may actually trigger trauma related symptoms because it involves invasive techniques including internal digital palpation of pelvic floor muscles and the use of vaginal dilators. Neglecting trauma in chronic pelvic pain treatment could contribute to poor treatment outcomes, low adherence, and drop out. RESPECT's trauma-sensitive psychological intervention will teach women skills to cope with PTS, pain, sexual dysfunction, and discomfort during physical therapy. RESPECT's trauma-sensitive physical therapy intervention will more sensitively apply the invasive aspects of treatment and reinforce women's use of trauma-related coping skills learned in the psychological intervention. RESPECT is predicted to decrease chronic pelvic pain, PTS, dysfunctional sexual behavior, treatment avoidance.

Study Aims

• Develop a multi-level trauma-sensitive (psychological and physical therapy) chronic pelvic pain intervention for inner-city women with histories of sexual abuse and PTS symptoms.
• Examine the feasibility of RESPECT in treating this population.
• Use a pilot open trial to examine the impact of RESPECT chronic pelvic pain, PTS, dysfunctional sexual behavior, treatment avoidance.

RESPECT's trauma-sensitive psychological intervention will 1) educate the patient about the relations between sexual abuse, PTS, and chronic pelvic pain 2) empower her by explaining that sexual abuse, chronic pelvic pain, and PTS are not her fault but she has the power to combat them 3) desensitize her to anxiety provoking components of the physical therapy intervention, and 4) teach her relaxation tools that she can use during physical therapy sessions, while practicing at-home physical therapy exercises, and to cope with pain more generally.

RESPECT's trauma-sensitive physical therapy intervention will 1) teach the patient techniques to address muscular tension that contributes to chronic pelvic pain 2) empower her by increasing her control over each phase of treatment (e.g., starting, stopping, expressing feelings and preferences) 3) comfort her by explaining that it is normal to experience discomfort during physical therapy treatment and 4) encourage her to use the trauma-related coping skills she learned in the psychotherapy component.

This initial project is intended to lead to a larger open trial that will examine not only treatment outcomes, but also the mechanisms of change (e.g., women's feeling of empowerment, decrease in PTS symptoms).

Inclusion criteria

• Fluent in English
• History of sexual abuse
• Premenopausal
• Chronic pelvic pain defined as pelvic pain with a duration of six months of at least a moderate severity

Exclusion criteria

• Not menstruating for reasons other than birth control
• Not currently receiving any current trauma-focused psychological treatment (i.e., prolonged exposure therapy, cognitive processing therapy, eye movement desensitization reprocessing)
• No current psychotic symptoms or current use of anti-psychotic medications
• No current suicidal ideation in the past month
• Not currently pregnant