The Effects of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Quality of Life Among Patients with Hepatitis B

Hepatitis B is associated with different physical and psychological complications. This study sought to evaluate the effects of cognitive behavioral therapy on the quality of life among patients with hepatitis B.
In this quasi-experimental study, 60 patients with hepatitis B were conveniently recruited from a private infectious disease clinic in Birjand, Iran. The patients were randomly allocated to either a control (n = 30) or an intervention (n = 30) group. Patients in the intervention group received cognitive behavioral therapy in eight 45-minute sessions while their counterparts received no cognitive behavioral therapy. All patients completed the 36-item Short Form Survey both before and after the intervention. The SPSS software (v. 15.0) was used to analyze the data by running the paired-sample t, independent-sample t, Wilcoxon signed-rank, and Mann-Whitney U test at a significance level of less than 0.05.
In the intervention group, the scores of the social functioning and general health domains of quality of life significantly decreased while the score of the emotional well-being domain significantly increased after the intervention (P 0.05). Moreover, in the control group, the scores of quality of life and its social functioning and general health domains significantly decreased (P 0.05). The groups did not significantly differ from each other respecting the pretest-posttest mean scores of the quality of life and its domains (P > 0.05).
This study suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy has no significant effect on the quality of life but significantly improves emotional well-being among patients with hepatitis B