The Effectiveness of Group Reality Therapy on Anxiety Sensitivity Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)

In recent years, a new concept that has gained much attention as an effective construct in irritable bowel syndrome is anxiety sensitivity. The purpose of this study was to investigate the Effectiveness of Group Reality Therapy on Anxiety Sensitivity Patients with irritable bowel syndrome.

The present study is a semi-experimental study with pretest-posttest with control group design. The research population included women with irritable bowel syndrome who referred to khatam-ol-anbia hospital in the Miyane city during the period from september to december 2012 who received definite diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome according to a gastroenterologist. From this population, a sample of 30 people was selected by available sampling method and randomly assigned to two experimental and control groups. Participants of the two groups completed the pre-test and post-test stages of Reiss & Peterson (1985) anxiety sensitivity index.  The subjects of the experimental group were placed under the training of reality therapy during 8 sessions of 90 minutes.

Data analysis showed that the use of group reality therapy significantly led to decrease in the average scores of the expremental group participants in the anxiety sensitivity (F=82/67, h2=0/75) and its components fear of physical anxiety, fear of lack of cognitive control and fear of anxiety view compared to the control group.

According to the results, Applying Group reality therapy in clinical practice will be helpful in resolving anxiety sensitivity-related problems in women with Irritable Bowel Syndrome