Co-morbid mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression and fear avoidance are often associated with chronic pain. This novel study aimed to explore the impact of osteopathic treatment on several psychological outcome measures relating to anxiety, depression, mental health and fear avoidance for a chronic pain population receiving osteopathic treatment over a 2-week period. The findings show that there were significant reductions in anxiety, pain, mental health dysfunction and improvements in self-care. These results are promising, and it is suggested that now a full-scale randomised controlled trial should be conducted.

Background: Chronic pain is a growing global and economically costly problem leading the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK to actively search for novel strategies to improve health outcomes. Some trials have shown a benefit when practitioners use a positive communication style, however, much of the available literature investigating the use of positive language to alter patient expectation utilises subjective reports from patients. Objectives: To demonstrate whether positive and negative communication before a highvelocity low amplitude (HVLA) thrust spinal manipulation of the C7-T1 spine segments, and within an osteopathic consultation setting, increases and decreases (respectively) pain pressure thresholds (PPT) to form contextual placebo and nocebo effects. Study design: pretest, post-test randomised controlled design. Methods: 35 asymptomatic participants were recruited and randomised into three separate condition arms using a repeated measures crossover design; negative communication (NegC), neutral communication (NeuC), or positive communication (PosC). Each condition included spinal manipulation (HVLA thrust) to the C7-T1 segments. PPTs were measured by an algometer over the spinous process of C7 pre and post each condition setting. Results: There was a significant effect of language style on PPT for the three conditions. Post-hoc tests demonstrated that positive communication had a significant effect on PPT (i.e., placebo effect), but the negative communication demonstrated no significant effect (i.e., no nocebo). Conclusion: These results were discussed in the context of communication style used during an osteopathic clinical consultation to potentially improve health outcomes in NHS and other clinical settings (Clinical trial registry https://clinicaltrials.gov/ number: NCT03855254).