As per the outcomes of an exploratory controlled trial published recently in ‘Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine’, significant improvements were observed concerning pain, along with mood and quality of life (QoL) with the use of Brief Guided Imagery (BGI).

Also, only 2 minutes are needed for positive effect on chronic pain and quality of life procedures with BGI usage as compared to other guided imagery methods with duration of 20 minutes a session.

Anat Kaplun and colleagues assessed the consequence of Brief Guided Imagery (BGI) on patients with chronic pain due to fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia negatively affects the routine functions, mental and physical health, and QoL.

A total of 37 women diagnosed with fibromyalgia were assigned to an intervention group 1 (IG1) comprising of 18 patients, or a control group (CG) comprising of 19 patients. After the first BGI trial, the 16 remaining individuals in CG became intervention group 2 (IG2), and 13 patients accomplished the trial.

Prior to and following the intervention, the patients accomplished a Brief Pain Inventory pain questionnaire and SF-36 satisfaction questionnaire. This study provides promising results for BGI in fibromyalgia. BGI usage considerably improved pain management, general activity, mood, walking ability, daily work, associations with others, sleep and satisfaction among fibromyalgia sufferers.

A tendency of improvement after BGI has been observed from this study; nevertheless more research is required to examine this method.