AbstractBackground and PurposeNorwegian Psychomotor Physiotherapy (NPMP) has been an established treatment approach for more than 50 years, mostly in the Scandinavian countries, usually applied to patients with widespread and long‐lasting musculoskeletal pain and/or psychosomatic disorders. Few studies have investigated the outcomes of NPMP, and no randomized clinical trials (RCT) with a comparing treatment group have systematically been tried out on individuals.MethodsThis is a pragmatic, single‐blinded RCT where 128 participants with long‐lasting widespread musculoskeletal pain and/or pain located to the neck and shoulders were block randomized to NPMP or Cognitive Patient Education combined with active individualized physiotherapy (COPE‐PT). Intention‐to‐treat with linear mixed models were used to estimate the group differences in treatment effects. The outcomes at 3, 6, and 12 months follow‐up were pain intensity, function, anxiety and depression, quality of life, sleep, fear of movement, and subjective health complaints. Risk profile (Örebro) was examined at 3 and 6 months. All participants underwent physical tests at baseline and 6 months.ResultsOne‐year data were available for 66.4% of the original participants. Calculated with intention‐to‐treat analysis, at 3 months statistically significant differences were found in favor of COPE‐PT for pain, anxiety and depression, quality of life‐physical dimension, risk profile and fear of movement. At 6 months, statistically significant differences in favor of COPE‐PT were found for anxiety and depression, and sleep. At 12 months, the improvements were still statistically significant for anxiety, depression and sleep. Both groups improved, but no statistically significant differences were found between the groups on the physical tests at 6 months.ConclusionsCOPE‐PT, which is targeted towards pain‐coping and increasing activity, contribute to more improvements than NPMP.