Impact of an integrated mindfulness and cognitive behavioural treatment for provoked vestibulodynia (IMPROVED): a qualitative study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Provoked Vestibulodynia (PVD) is a chronic pain condition involving sharp pain to the vulvar vestibule. Because of compelling outcomes using mindfulness-based approaches in the treatment of chronic pain, we developed and tested a four-session mindfulness and cognitive behavioural therapy tailored to women with PVD (called “IMPROVED”). Here we report on the experiences of 14 women (mean age 39.6 years) following IMPROVED using qualitative analysis. Six major themes emerged that captured women's narrative stories: (1) feelings of normality and community in the group setting, (2) positive psychological outcomes following IMPROVED, (3) impact of relationship – including the beneficial effect of having a supportive partner and the negative impact of having an uncooperative partner, (4) an appreciation for treatment, including gratitude towards group facilitators, (5) barriers impeding ongoing practice of acquired skills following the completion of IMPROVED and (6) self-efficacy, which included a feeling that pain management was much more under women's own control than they previously believed. Although the precise mechanisms of action are unknown and quantitative analysis of outcomes is still pending, these data are the first to report on the benefits of a mindfulness-based approach for improving quality of life and reducing genital pain among women with PVD.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.010 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.005 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".