The effect of the Stanford Chronic Pain Self-Management Programme (CPSMP) is tested in a randomized controlled trial with enrollment of Danish chronic pain patients. A total of 500 chronic pain patients is randomized into either an CPSMP intervention group or a control group.

The CPSMP is brief patient education program consisting of 6 weekly sessions. Two trained instructors teach a group of 8-16 chronic pain patients about managing pain. The instructors are not health professionals but chronic pain patient themselves. The program is highly structured and manualized.

Previous studies have shown beneficial effects of the CPSMP on pain, self-efficacy and well-being. Hence we expect the CPSMP to have an effect on various domains.

1. Symptom reduction - lower self-reported pain in the CPSMP group compared to controls
2. Illness perception - the cpsmp group will differ from controls in illness perception and have higher disease related self-efficacy
3. Sickness behavior - the cpsmp group will have fewer sick days and lower health care utilization (estimated by registerbased data)than controls
4. Quality of life - the cpsmp group will report higher life satisfaction and less social isolation than controls

Inclusion Criteria:

• Pain in more than 3 months
• Self-reported pain > 4.99 on 10 point Likert scale
• Age > 18 years old
• Able to understand, speak, and read Danish

Exclusion Criteria:

• Pain related to conditions that the patient are likely to consider more important than pain itself, e.g. pregnancy, cancer in acute phases
• Drug abuse, psychiatric or physical disease that would prevent participation in weekly sessions
• Drug abuse, psychiatric or physical disease that would disturb completion of group sessions