Effects of Self-Massage on Pain Among Elders in Rimklong Lorlae Community, Khannayao District

Abstract

Soreness and muscle pain at neck and shoulders are usually found in elderly people. If they do not take care of themselves, they will get sick. Caring and treatment for curing the sickness causes additional unnecessary expenses. A self-massage is an alternative therapy that can relieve soreness and pain. This study is a quasi-experimental research, one group pretest-posttest design. It aims to compare the levels of neck and shoulder pain before and after self-massage on 42 elderly people living in a community in Kannayao district, Bangkok, Thailand. A pain assessment form was for recording the levels of pain before and after self-massage. Content validity was by 3 experts. An 11 postures of self-massage on neck and shouldersbooklet was provided to each participant. Using telephone calls to follow up each participant once a week for 6 weeks. Analysis by frequency, percentage, median, interquatiles range and wilcoxon signed rank test.
Finding shows that most participants were female (81%), half of them were sellers (45.20%), the median of pain level before a self-massage was 2 from 5, and the median of pain level after self-massage was 0.The results show that the levels of neck and shoulder pain before and after self-massage were scientific significantly different (p< .001). In conclusion, self-massage can relieve the pain of neck and shoulder. Therefore, self-massage should be introduced to elders people with neck and shoulder pain.