Forgiveness Education in Fibromyalgia

Fibromyalgia, a long-term or chronic disorder, is not well understood by the medical community until now. Its symptoms include chronic muscle pain, fatigue, sleep problems, and painful tender points or trigger points, which often overlap with other diseases. Due to the cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, there isn’t a very effective way to cure this disease though a variety of medications can help control symptoms.

In this paper, the authors introduced a forgiveness education in patients with fibromyalgia based on Worthington and Scherer’s view that forgiveness was an emotion-focused coping strategy that may promote health. First, the authors hypothesized that forgiveness could potentially be a useful coping strategy in patients with fibromyalgia. Then a qualitative study was conducted in a workshop setting. The authors identified a random sample of patients with fibromyalgia who completed the Fibromyalgia and Chronic Fatigue Clinic Treatment Program in 2010. And the participants were mailed a letter of invitation and instructions to return the letter with their contact information and preference to attend 1 of 2 forgiveness education sessions. Then forgiveness was presented to participants by using a video and workbook in a workshop setting and each education session was 90 minutes long. Next, the authors analyzed the observation of participant engagement, themes related to educational content, feedback about the education format and delivery of information and forgiveness application to daily life. And collected data were analyzed by the study investigators with expertise in qualitative research methods.

The analysis of qualitative data revealed 3 important themes. First, participants readily accepted forgiveness as an emotion-focused coping strategy and understood the associations between harboring resentment, internalizing stress, and experiencing symptoms. Second, participants welcomed the notion that forgiveness was about controlling personal responses to adversity and injustice and understood that this control was especially relevant in the context of chronic pain. Third, participants found that the forgiveness education reinforced concepts that they had learned in other patient education sessions.

All in all, the results suggested that forgiveness education was acceptable to patients with fibromyalgia. And forgiveness education warranted further study as an emotion-focused coping strategy.

Article by Loren L. Toussaint, et al, from USA.

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