Comparing Interventions for Indoor Air -Related Functional Symptoms
Condition: Environmental Illness; Functional Symptoms
MeSH terms: Environmental Illness
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      The aim of the current study is to compare the effictiveness of three different psychosocial
      therapies for treating functional disorders caused by indoor air problems.
    

Detailed description: 
      Indoor air -related respiratory and other multiple organ symptoms are common in work
      environments in Finland. Symptoms effect on well-being and quality of life and may lead to
      impaired social and cognitive functioning and decreased work ability. All indoor air -related
      conditions are not explained by underlying physical factors and remain medically unexplained.
      Functional disorders are conditions where patients complain of multiple medically unexplained
      physical symptoms or physical problems don´t correlate with symptom severity. Indoor air
      -related symptoms and functional disorders are strongly associated to each other but there
      are no well-established diagnostic criteria for the condition . So far, there is no available
      treatment program to the indoor air -related symptoms to offer in primary or occupational
      health care services in Finland.

      In randomized controlled trials, cognitive behavioral treatment has shown to be effective for
      patients suffering from functional disorders. In addition, a relaxation technique entitled as
      applied relaxation (Tuomisto & al, 1996) have shown to been shown to been effective to treat
      different kind of functional problems.

      There are no published trials on treatment for individuals of indoor air related
      symptomatology. The present study is designed as a pragmatic trial to investigate the effect
      of three different treatment programs as compared to treatment as usual (TAU) for indoor air-
      related problems in order to improve the (1) work capacity and (2) well-being. A secondary
      aim of the study is to identify psychological factors affecting the patients' response to the
      treatment.

      The patients are recruited from occupational health care services to establish and to
      evaluate the efficacy and usability of the treatment procedures. Participants will first
      undergo baseline assessment including medical examination of the respiratory symptoms. Then
      they are randomized to one of the study groups: TAU or one of the intervention groups. All
      study patients receive TAU at occupational health care services for their medical problems
      during the study. Patients randomized to the study groups receive also the intervention with
      TAU.
    

Intervention name(s): Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT); Applied relaxation group therapy; Information session (psychoeducation)
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral; Behavioral
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: None (Open Label)
Primary purpose: Treatment
Keywords: Indoor Air; Medically unexplained symptoms; Randomized controlled trial; Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy; Applied relaxation